No big-league team, Cubs or otherwise, has ever been more thoroughly beaten in a single game. One box score showed the Mutuals with 34 hits and seven errors. For the White Stockings it lists two hits and 36 errors.2 (Wild pitches and passed balls were counted in the error column.)

The date was Thursday, June 18, 1874. On the day before in Philadelphia, the Chicagos had lost an early lead and the game. Two White Stockings regulars were not in the lineup in Brooklyn, pitcher George Zettlein and left fielder Ned Cuthbert. Manager Nick Young “did not care as yet to make public” the reason for the change.3 But a correspondent told Chicago readers that there was “a very strong suspicion that they sold out the Chicago club [took money to lose on purpose] in the Philadelphia games.”4 The internal fuss was too much for the remaining Chicago players. “Nearly every man in the White Stocking nine seemed utterly demoralized,”5 and their play in Brooklyn was completely indifferent.

Veteran Fred Treacey took Cuthbert’s place in left field. Dan Collins was given the pitching assignment. Recently picked up from the St. Louis Empires, Collins had beaten the champion Boston Red Stockings, 8-3, in his debut 10 days before. His pitching was described as “rather wild, but nevertheless effective,” and he won despite six wild pitches and three passed balls.6

The weather in Brooklyn was cool and very windy, perhaps accounting for some of the misplayed fly balls. The home team won the toss, elected to take the field, and retired the White Stockings in order in the top of the first inning. In the home half, the Mutuals piled up eight unearned runs on seven hits (including five in a row) plus errors, wild pitches, and passed balls. Collins “was wonderfully and fearfully wild in his delivery, and persisted in putting it clear over the catcher’s head.”7

Another wild pitch allowed a Mutual run in the second inning, and five more runs scored in the third on three hits, a base on wides,8 and various misplays, increasing the Mutes’ lead to 14-0. After the first five home batters had reached safely in the third, Chicago captain and catcher Fergy Malone sent Collins to right field and brought in shortstop Davy Force to pitch. Paul Hines moved from center to shortstop, and John Glenn shifted from right field to center. In Henry Chadwick’s scoresheet of the game, Collins is shown with seven wild pitches in two-plus innings pitched, while the Chicago Times counted 10 errors by Collins — “all over pitches.”9 Chicago’s woeful fielding continued through the whole game. “Not only did they fail to hold the ball,” an observer wrote, “but they went after it as though they would just as soon muff it as not.”10

But it was the Mutuals’ lusty batting against the obliging serves of shortstop-turned-pitcher Davy Force that made the score astronomical. “All they had to do was just to walk up and cork it hard, and the ball was sure to go like a rifle shot out of the reach of anyone.”11 In the fourth inning, errors plus three singles added three unearned runs to the ledger. The Mutuals unleashed a rare power display, smacking three home runs and a triple in the fifth good for five more tallies. Jack Burdock, Tom Carey, and Joe Start hit the homers, while Doug Allison got the three-base hit. The Mutes hit five triples in the game, one in each of the last five innings. In the sixth inning, they slammed out nine safe hits — the last seven of them coming consecutively after two men were out — to plate eight more runs. The score was now 30-0.

The errors and hard hitting kept coming hot and heavy in the five-run seventh, and the usually meticulous Chadwick stopped noting just which run was scored on which batter’s hit in his scorebook. In the eighth Joe Start — in the 16th season of a remarkable career in amateur and professional baseball that spanned from 1859 to 1886 — hit his second two-run home run of the game. And in the bottom of the ninth, a two-out triple by Jack Remsen drove home one final run.12 The Mutuals scored in all nine innings to win by a final count of 38-1.

Between the home team’s run-making sprees, the visitors were retired in one-two-three order in seven of their nine innings. Mutual pitcher Bobby Mathews’s bent-over underhanded fastballs and parabolic curves were never more effective, retiring seven men on strikes and 10 men on foul tips, foul flies, and foul bounds. The first 12 Chicago batters went out in order before Jim Devlin reached first base on a muffed the third strike in the fifth inning. In that round, Mutual catcher Dick Higham reinjured a sore thumb and changed positions with right fielder Doug Allison.

In the seventh inning, Chicago avoided the “Chicago” shutout with their only two hits of the game, aided by a couple of questionable calls by umpire George Bechtel. Levi Meyerle “astonished the crowd by getting a fair-foul13 for two bases — at least the umpire did not call foul.”14 Fergy Malone “followed with a red-hot liner, which [third baseman Jack] Burdock took about three inches above the ground, but the umpire called it a pickup.”15 Burdock threw low to first, giving Malone his base and allowing Meyerle to advance to third. Devlin “hit a lucky grounder safe” to left field to drive Meyerle home.

With four home runs in this one game, New York accounted for more than half of its season total of seven (in 65 games). Start led the slugging with two home runs, a triple, two singles, and a run-scoring fly out. Carey had six hits, including a three-bagger. And Carey and Start each scored six runs in eight plate appearances. The Mutuals got 34 clean hits, and 18 men reached first on errors. Counting wild pitches and passed balls, Chicago made 36 errors. Mathews finished with just two hits allowed and eight strikeouts.

Did the White Stockings intentionally lay down in protest because of the benching of Zettlein and Cuthbert? While we cannot say for sure, we do know that the pair played every game for the team for the rest of the season. The Whites remained inconsistent for the rest of the year, winning at home and losing on the road. They finished in fifth place out of eight. The Mutuals had started the season slowly but eventually made a September run for the pennant. They finished second as Boston won its third pennant in a row.

The Mutuals’ 37-run margin of victory has never been approached in big-league baseball. This game erased the prior National Association record margin of 30 runs, set at Middletown on June 22, 1872, when the Mansfields beat the Eckfords 36-6. The National League record of 31 runs occurred on July 24, 1882, when Chicago humiliated Cleveland 35-4. The record American League margin of 27 runs was set on August 22, 2007, when Texas trashed Baltimore in the first game of a doubleheader, 30-3. As far as Cubs losses go, the franchise has suffered two 22-run losses since joining the National League at its founding in 1876. One came on June 6, 1892, at Baltimore, 23-1, and the other occurred on September 16, 1975, when the Pirates won a 22-0 shutout at Wrigley Field.

Sources

Most of the play-by-play details were culled from Henry Chadwick’s scoresheets for this game. These are part of SABR’s Stagno Collection of National Association game reports and records, of which the author is the current custodian. Besides the publications listed in the notes, other newspapers consulted include the New York Times, New York Sunday Mercury, New York World, New York Sun, Brooklyn Eagle, Chicago Inter-Ocean, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Philadelphia All-Day City Item.

Retrosheet.org and Baseball-Reference.com were consulted.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1874/B06180NY21874.htm

Notes

1 Clubs named after cities, like the Chicago B.B. Club or the Boston B.B. Club, would often be referred to by a nickname as well, like “the Chicago White Stockings” and “the St. Louis Browns.” But older teams with formal club names, like the Athletic, Mutual, and Atlantic clubs, were seldom referred to using the name of their home city. So terms like “New York Mutuals” or “Philadelphia Athletics” almost never appeared in print.

2 New York Clipper, June 27, 1874.

3 Chicago Times, June 19, 1874.

4 Chicago Times, June 19, 1874.

5 Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1874.

6 Chicago Tribune, June 9, 1874.

7 New York Herald, June 19, 1874.

8 In 1874 (and 1874 only), the pitching rules were revised to make it an automatic call of “wide” on any ball the batter could not possibly hit. “Wides” did not need to be accumulated in threes to be called a “ball,” unlike pitches that were merely out of the batter’s strike zone. A batter was given his base on three wides or three called balls. After one season of confusion, the concept of “wides” was dropped from the rules.

9 Chicago Times, June 19, 1874.

10 New York Herald, June 19, 1874.

11 Chicago Times, June 19, 1874.

12 Prior to 1880, the rules required that each side have nine full innings at bat, even if the team batting last was already guaranteed a victory.

13 Prior to 1877, a batted ball was considered fair or foul by its location when it first touched the ground or was first touched by a fielder. The balls that bounced fair to start but immediately veered into foul territory were called “fair-fouls.”

14 New York Clipper, June 27, 1874.

15 Chicago Times, June 19, 1874.

The final loss of the streak came in the second game of a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns on June 22. The Colonels were just back from a fourweek Eastern road trip, having lost 21 games in Cincinnati, Columbus, Philadelphia, Brooklyn (one of them played in Newtown, the Brooklyn club’s Sunday home), and Baltimore. The losses were hardly the only unusual aspect of the trip.

After a pair of home losses to Baltimore, Louisville had been swept in four-game series at Cincinnati and Columbus. The Colonels were scheduled to play in Philadelphia on June 4, but the squad did not show up. The players turned up two days later in Philadelphia, reporting that their train had been stuck for two days in northern Pennsylvania because of flooding along the Conemaugh River that had washed over the track. It turned out to be backwater from the deadly Johnstown Flood.

The delay did nothing to improve Louisville’s performance. The Colonels dropped four to Philadelphia and then went to Brooklyn and did the same. The road trip moved on to Baltimore, where things really got interesting. The Colonels were owned by Louisville businessman Mordecai Davidson, a man who brooked no opposition to his management actions. A hard contract negotiator, Davidson was deeply unpopular with the players.

In the midst of the losing streak, Davidson decided to motivate the players by instituting fines for poor play. He doled out such punishments as a $25 levy on Paul Cook for “stupid base running,” and $25 on Dan Shannon for “a fumble and a disastrous wild throw.”

After losing the opening game at Baltimore and experiencing several more Davidson fines, members of the club went on strike. All but one unknown player signed a letter to Davidson stating that they wouldn’t play unless the fines were dropped. Davidson, not surprisingly, refused.

The player uprising was not Davidson’s only concern. A week earlier he had attempted to sell off most of his players to recoup his investment in the team, only to be blocked by the league since it meant the dissolution of the franchise. While the player strike was in progress, Davidson was also defending himself at an American Association meeting in New York. Davidson met with the players in Baltimore, but it was hardly a conciliatory session. He increased the fines for errors on the field to $50.

The result was that six players—Guy Hecker, Pete Browning, Dan Shannon, Harry Raymond, Red Ehret, and Paul Cook—refused to take the field for the game on June 15. Filling out their lineup with local amateurs, Louisville lost a 20th straight game, 4–2. Baltimore manager Bill Barnie intervened and persuaded the six strikers to return to the field, telling them that the league would determine the outcome of the fines.

After three more losses, the ragtag Colonels headed back to the Bluegrass with a season’s record of 8–43.

When the club arrived in Louisville on June 21, it was payday. Since the Association had not considered the players’ complaint and since Davidson was holding firm on the fines, the players received meager pay envelopes. Guy Hecker, a winner of 52 games in 1884, was reported to have received a total of $1.95. Browning, the team’s batting star since 1882, was in the hole by $325. These events did not inspire the players to new heights of vigor, and they dropped the first game of the home series with St. Louis, 7–3.

The first game of a June 22 doubleheader saw Louisville jump out to a 3–0 lead after three innings. But they trailed 6–3 after four and ultimately lost 7–6, with St. Louis pushing over the winning run in the ninth.

Game two matched Louisville’s John Ewing against Nat Hudson for St. Louis. Louisville elected to bat first and the Colonels were retired in order. Ewing, brother of future Hall of Famer Buck Ewing, retired lead-off hitter Arlie Latham before surrendering a scratch single to Tommy McCarthy. A passed ball and a double by Tip O’Neill put the Browns up 1–0. With two outs in the Colonels’ second, Browning and Farmer Vaughn delivered infield singles. Browning stole third and scored the tying run. Louisville threatened again in the fourth when a two-out error by second baseman Yank Robinson put Harry Raymond on first. Raymond stole second and took third on catcher Jocko Milligan’s wild throw. Browning then sent a scorcher down the third-base line. Latham corralled it and threw out Browning at first to end the inning.

Latham opened the St. Louis sixth with a single, but was thrown out by Vaughn attempting to steal second. McCarthy was issued a four-ball walk. (1889 was the first season in which the walk rule was reduced to four balls.) O’Neill singled, sending McCarthy to third, and he scored on Charlie Comiskey’s sacrifice fly to center.

Louisville was retired routinely in the sixth and seventh. In the eighth, the Colonels’ Chicken Wolf singled with two outs and took second on an error at first base. Farmer Weaver singled him home with a hit to center. The score remained 2–2 into the 11th. After Louisville was blanked in the top half, Comiskey led off the bottom of the inning with a line drive to left field. Browning made a long run and briefly had the ball in his grasp, but it fell to the ground for an error. Jack Boyle, who had replaced the injured Robinson in the ninth, singled, putting men at first and second with no outs. Charlie Duffee hit a long single to center, scoring Comiskey and giving St. Louis a 3–2 win, and the Colonels a 26th consecutive loss, a major-league record that still stood in 2012.

The losing streak came to an end the next afternoon. Louisville built a 5–0 lead off Icebox Chamberlain after three innings, two of the runs courtesy of Comiskey, Yank Robinson’s fill-in at second, who made four errors in the third inning alone. Tom Ramsey got the 7–3 win, Louisville’s first since May 21.

In early July Davidson surrendered the franchise to the American Association. A new group of Louisville businessmen bought the team and paid the players the fines Davidson had refused to return.

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.

A crowd of 1,2501 was on hand to watch the Philadelphia Phillies demolish the Louisville Colonels, 29-4, on August 17, 1894, breaking the National League records for runs, hits, and total bases in a game. Sam Thompson, playing as part of the “only major league outfield of future Hall of Famers who had all three fielders batting over .400”2 in the same season, hit for the cycle for the Phillies, in a 6-for-7 performance. Thompson batted .415 in 1894, playing right field for the Phillies. Ed Delahanty played left and batted .404 for the season. Patrolling in center was Billy Hamilton, and he batted .403.

Philadelphia, the home team, batted first in the game. The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that the Phillies “made the largest score in any championship game this season and the largest number of hits and total bases.”3 Every Philadelphia batter had at least one hit and every starting player scored at least one run. The Phillies tallied runs in every inning except the second. And by batting first, Philadelphia had nine turns at the plate, adding four runs to their total in the ninth inning. At the end of the first inning, they had already scored enough runs to win the game, as their pitcher, Kid Carsey, limited the Colonels to four runs on eight hits. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, “Louisville could do nothing with Carsey’s curves.”4 For Philadelphia, “[T]he Phillies knocked Wadsworth’s delivery all over the field and sometimes out of it, and, aided by the poor fielding of the visitors, scored runs pretty much as they pleased.”5 Amazingly, the box score listed Philadelphia as scoring only 16 earned runs (meaning 13 were unearned)!

Sam Thompson hit for the cycle, getting six hits in seven at-bats (three singles, a double, a triple, and a home run), good for 12 bases, “his longest hit being a home run which bounded over the fence from the bicycle track in right centre field.”6 He also scored four runs. Even though the Phillies collected 36 base hits, they had only five doubles, one triple (by Thompson), and two home runs, for a total of 49 bases. That means that the Phillies pounded out 28 singles in the game.

For Philadelphia, Joe Sullivan and Mike Grady each had five hits (four singles and a double) in the thrashing. Hamilton knocked five singles, while Carsey and Delahanty added four singles apiece, and “Captain Jack Boyle made a double and two singles, and besides stole three bases.”7 For Louisville, John Grim hit a home run over the left-field stands to account for two runs in the fourth inning. Tom Brown’s double in the sixth drove in the only other Colonels runs. When the game was finally finished, Colonels pitcher Jack Wadsworth’s “arm hung limp and the Louisville fielders’ tongues were hanging out, the result of their running after long hits.”8 Wadsworth walked three. Carsey also walked three and had the only strikeout of the game.

It was the third victory in a row for the Phillies. It was the sixth game of a 28-game homestand, and they would win 10 in a row before tying the Cincinnati Reds on August 27. The 29-4 victory came after two severe beatings of the Colonels, by scores of 14-4 and 17-3. In the three games, Philadelphia scored 60 runs against Louisville. However, the Phillies could climb no higher than fourth place in the league. Meanwhile, the Colonels lost eight straight from August 15 to August 25, tied the New York Giants, and then lost 10 more games. From August 15 to the end of the season, Louisville sadly played to a record of 4-33-1, leaving the team in last place, 54 games behind the Baltimore Orioles.

In 1894 Thompson led the league in slugging (.696) and RBIs (147), and his OPS for the season was 1.161. Thompson’s accomplishment marked the second cycle in Phillies history, after one the same season by teammate Lave Cross, who hit for the cycle on April 24 against the Brooklyn Bridegrooms. Other players to hit for the cycle in 1894 were Bill Hassamaer of the Washington Senators (June 13 against the St. Louis Brown Stockings) and Tom Parrott of the Cincinnati Reds (September 28 against the New York Giants).

In an editorial the next day, the Courier-Journal printed a “Cause for Complaint.” With 29 runs scored, the writer questioned why Wadsworth was left in the game to suffer so many runs when other pitchers “could not have been hurt, nor have made matters any worse by going in the box.”9 It blamed bad judgment “in giving up a game as lost because a heavy lead is made when there are other pitchers on the bench.”10 The writer called for the president of the club to check in with manager Billy Barnie and “(find) out what the trouble is.”11

The box score12 is shown below.

Sources

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

Notes

As might be surmised, Chicago fans didn’t expect much; only 1,150 of them paid to see the game. Even after it was over, The Sporting News managed to dismiss the afternoon’s events in a single-sentence writeup lost amid a sea of page 2 box scores. This was the writeup from start to finish: “The greatest picnic of the season in the line of base ball occurred at the West Side Park today when the Colts broke the record by scoring 36 runs on 32 hits for a total of 51 bases.”1

The laconic nature of that summation says more about sports journalism in the 1890s than it does about the game, which more than a century later remains the most prolific one-team offensive explosion in the history of major-league baseball.

Chick Fraser, a 23-year-old right-hander in his second big-league season, made the start for the Colonels. Fraser would win 175 games—15 of them that season—in a big-league career that lasted into 1909. The club’s 1897 Opening Day starter, Fraser was arguably Louisville’s most reliable arm, although with the Colonels that wasn’t saying much. This was decidedly not Fraser’s day. He allowed three runs in the first inning, five in the second, and six more just one out into the third before being removed in favor of Sheriff Jim Jones, a 20-year-old prospect making his big-league debut.

That was all right with the Colts, who added a seventh run before Jones retired the side in the third, and proceeded to score in every subsequent inning. Barry McCormick, a lightly recalled infielder playing shortstop that afternoon, batted eight times and produced six hits, among them a triple and a home run. Just to rub salt in the numerous Louisville wounds, McCormick also stole two bases. The Colts stole six bases in all. Why? Because, obviously, they could. Right fielder Jimmy Ryan also homered.

The chief beneficiary of this explosion was Colts pitcher Nixey Callahan, who led by 15 runs after 2 1/2 innings—the Colts having exercised their option as the home team of batting first. “Callahan made but little effort to pitch after the third,” the next morning’s papers reported.2 Callahan’s pitching labors may have been half-hearted, but he certainly worked at the plate. He contributed five hits, two of them doubles.

About the only Colt frustrated by what passed for the Colonels’ pitching that day was the best known one, first baseman and manager Cap Anson. The Chicago legend, 45 years old and in the last of his 22 big-league seasons, managed only one hit, although he did walk three times.

Fraser and Jones may have been ineffective, but they didn’t get much help, either. Louisville fielders committed nine errors that afternoon, permitting a staggering 16 unearned runs to cross the plate. Center fielder Ollie Pickering made three of them. That was a sorry fielding performance even by the relatively low standards of 1897.

Perhaps the most amazing offensive statistic of the entire afternoon was this: Chicago led 21-7 at the completion of seven innings, then produced 15 more runs in the eighth and ninth innings alone. Because they had chosen to bat first, the White Stockings hit in the ninth inning despite already leading by 22 runs. The gratuitous insult that followed produced eight additional runs, Chicago’s biggest inning of the afternoon.

It would improve the story to report that the offensive explosion got the Colts rolling, but that is only partly true. Recovering from his record defeat, Fraser returned to the mound the next day and defeated Chicago 8–7. And although Anson’s Colts did win seven of their next nine games, that brief run lifted them only into 10th place. They finished ninth. The Colonels stumbled home 11th in the 12-team National League.

But nobody had it worse than Jones, the young Louisville reliever who absorbed most of the Chicago onslaught. After playing one more game, he was released and kicked around in the minors before being signed by the desperate Giants at the tail end of New York’s forgettable 1901 season. They threw him out on the mound against the St. Louis Cardinals, and Jones lasted five innings, surrendering six more runs. He never pitched again in the majors, having allowed 28 runs in fewer than a dozen career innings.

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.

Notes

1 The Sporting News, July 3, 1897, p. 3.

2 Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1897, p. 4.

The Spiders were a victim of syndicate ownership, a system prevalent in the late 1890s through which the same people owned two teams. Miffed by the failure of city leaders to permit them to play Sunday baseball in Cleveland, brothers Stanley and Frank Robison bought the St. Louis team in March 1899, and moved their best players there. Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, and others vanished in exchange for a collection of second-stringers. The result was a 20–134 record that would have placed the Spiders 12 games behind the 1962 New York Mets, one of the worst teams of the 20th century. In addition to the record 24-game losing streak, the Spiders remain the only team with six different losing streaks of 10 games or more; and the only team to lose 40 out of 41 consecutive games. Scrappy Bill Joyce was slated to manage Cleveland but, in the prime of his career, walked away from baseball instead.

The “Misfits,” as they were called, lost 10–1 on Opening Day, April 15, and grabbed last place for good on May 3 with a 3–10 record. Fans stopped coming to games, and players stopped trying to win. Stanley Robison moved the last two players of merit, Lave Cross and Willie Sudhoff, to St. Louis and begged the National League to permit his team to finish its schedule on the road. Only New York and Boston refused, thinking their teams could draw fans anywhere. They were wrong. Two hundred fans watched Cleveland beat New York on August 25, during a home series that ended Cleveland’s record 50-game road trip. Then the losing streak began.

The Spiders were outscored 209–65 during the streak, and there were few heartbreaking losses among the 24 games. The game-losing run in 10 losses came in the first inning. Loss number 14 was the only one with late-inning drama. Cleveland’s big right-hander Charlie Knepper had a 6–4 lead with three outs to go in Chicago. He hit opposing pitcher Jack Taylor with a pitch, got two quick outs, and gave up singles to Bill Everitt and Sam Mertes. With the Spiders still leading by a run, Chicago’s Bill Bradley seemed to end the game with a chopper that shortstop Harry Lochhead scooped up. But first baseman Tommy Tucker dropped the ball and failed to find it until Everitt and Mertes had scored. The frustrated Tucker, once an American Association batting champion, was released a few days later.

The next season was the one in which the modern “visiting-team-bats-first” convention gained favor, so the September 16, 1899, game was one of the last in which the home team chose to bat first. Washington scored a run that first half-inning when center fielder Jimmy Slagle singled, Win Mercer—a pitcher trying to become a third baseman—walked, and outfielder Buck Freeman singled home Slagle.

Cleveland’s eight-run bottom of the second began with the major-league debut at bat of Otto Krueger: a ground-ball single to shortstop off aging utilityman Jimmy Stafford’s glove. The floodgates opened. Jim Duncan singled. Harry Lochhead bunted poorly back to the mound, but pitcher Jack Fifield thought he heard someone yell “Third base!” and threw there although Krueger was already safe. Bases loaded.

Lew McAllister seemed to hit into a double play, but Stafford dropped the toss at second base for an error. Pitcher Charlie Knepper walked with the bases loaded for another run, and Harry Colliflower, a pitcher filling in for center fielder Tommy Dowd, who had a fever, ripped a two-run single up the middle. Cleveland 4, Washington 1. Dick Harley beat out a bunt. After one out, Charlie Hemphill singled for two runs when center fielder Slagle threw in wild for an error. Another out later, Jim Duncan singled and two runs scored when Buck Freeman threw in wild for an error. The Misfits had put together the eight runs on six hits and three errors.

Washington countered right away with four in the third inning aided by three straight bunts against the inept Cleveland infield. Washington’s Jack Fifield went on to pitch four perfect innings while the Senators continued to chip away. Three two-out singles in the fifth put Washington down by two. In the eighth Slagle led off with another bunt single, advanced on a groundout, and scored to make it 8-7 on Jack O’Brien’s single. Knepper was getting tired, but relief pitching was not a popular idea in the 19th century. Dan McGann singled and Buck Freeman doubled both runners home to put Washington in front. By inning’s end, the Spiders trailed 11-8.

Although the Spiders appeared doomed to another loss, they rallied. Hemphill tripled in a run in the bottom of the seventh, and Colliflower singled in a run in the bottom of the eighth. That made it Washington 11, Cleveland 10. The Misfits seemed on their way to tying the game in the eighth when Lew McAllister broke an 0-for-19 slump with a single, but Freeman gunned out Duncan at the plate with a beautiful throw. Freeman added a run-scoring triple in the top of the ninth, and Shad Barry applied the finishing touches to the score with a rattling inside-the-park home run that gave him six RBIs for the day.

Cleveland manager-second baseman Joe Quinn, Hemphill, and Krueger went out in order in the bottom of the inning to make the 24th consecutive loss complete. The winning pitcher Jack Fifield, never got another major-league victory.

Sunday was an off-day. On Monday Cleveland took the third game of the series to snap its string of losses. Jack Harper, in his major-league debut, beat journeyman Bill Magee, 5-4, in ten innings. Tommy Dowd, back in the lineup, doubled in the last frame and scored on a Charlie Hemphill single. That raised Cleveland’s win total to 20 for the season.

The loss gave Magee, who had already lost to the Misfits while pitching for the Louisvilles and Phillies, an unlikely distinction. For three different clubs he had been defeated by the worst team ever.

Frank Vaccaro served as researcher and fact-checker on this essay.

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 inaugural 1901 American League season was scheduled to open in Detroit on Wednesday, April 24, but rain just before game time prevented play. The next day was sunny, warm for April, and “a day to make a well man glad to be alive, and a sick man feel the tingle of returning health.”2

The largest throng to yet attend a ball game in Detroit overflowed Bennett Park. The players paraded to the park in carriages from the Russell House Hotel, and by the time they arrived, a mass of 10,0233 had overflowed into the outfield. The overflow necessitated the imposition of a ground rule— any balls into the outfield crowd would be doubles.

The visiting Milwaukee Brewers4 were introduced first to a polite reception. The Tigers, in red coats, then lined up, marched a few steps toward the grandstand, and removed their caps in a salute to the fans. After the teams warmed up, “Oom Paul,” the canine Detroit mascot, made an appearance, and the local Elks club presented a loving cup to Tiger owner James Burns and manager George Stallings, both fellow Elks. A local legislator, Jacob Haarer, filled in for the mayor and threw out the first pitch to Charlie Bennett, a retired catcher and Detroit baseball legend for whom Bennett Park was named.5

After a band played a prophetic “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night,” Brewer leadoff hitter Irv Waldron hit a grounder to Kid Elberfeld at shortstop, who “made a gorgeous fumble.”6 Billy Gilbert followed with a base hit and Bill Hallman sacrificed both runners up a base. Tiger third baseman Jim “Doc” Casey then forced Waldron at the plate on             John Anderson’s ground ball. Anderson and Gilbert attempted a double steal, but Elberfeld’s return throw to catcher Fred Buelow caught Gilbert for the third out.

Casey led off for Detroit. Wearing the club’s new uniform, with a small red tiger on the cap, he accepted a basket of flowers from the Elks on arrival at the batter’s box. After he bowed in appreciation and handed off the flowers, he grounded back to the Milwaukee pitcher, Pink Hawley. The Tigers managed a hit and stolen base by Bill “Kid” Gleason, but didn’t score.

Wid Conroy opened the Brewers’ second with a single. He went to third on an out by playing manager Hugh Duffy, but first baseman Frank Dillon made a bad throw in an attempt catch Conroy, who advanced and scored the first run of the game. With two outs Brewer catcher Tom Leahy reached second base on a wild throw by Elberfeld; he then scored as Tiger left fielder Ducky Holmes muffed a fly ball by Hawley when Holmes encountered the overflow crowd in the outfield. After another Elberfeld error, the Brewers were retired, but they had two runs. The four Detroit errors made it look to the Detroit Tribune reporter that the Tigers were hypnotized or suffering from an attack of stage fright. In any case they were playing “wretched ball.”7

Detroit failed to score in its half of the second, and Milwaukee, already leading 2-0, added five more runs in the third on another error, four hits, a walk and a sacrifice. Stallings replaced starting pitcher Roscoe Miller with Emil Frisk during the uprising. Milwaukee’s seven-run lead held as the Tigers failed to score in their half of the third. Brewer captain and third baseman Jimmy Burke made the defensive play of the game here, stopping Buelow’s hot grounder and throwing him out at first.8

Detroit managed to shut down the Brewers in the fourth, then scored their first run on an error, followed by Dillon’s ground rule double into the crowd. Elberfeld then knocked in Dillon with another ground rule double. The Tigers pecked away with a run in the fifth, and after six innings it was 7-3, Milwaukee.

The Brewers, though, lengthened this to 10-3, plating three runs after two outs in the seventh. Duffy apparently considered the lead safe and replaced Hawley with Pete Dowling, a 24-year-old left-hander, who “had been Detroit’s jonah all last season.”9 Dowling held form through the Detroit seventh, allowing only a walk.

Milwaukee padded its lead to 13-3 in the eighth, but the Tigers nicked Dowling for a run in their half, using another ground-rule double by Dillon. Still plugging away, Frisk got the Brewers one-two-three in the top of the ninth.

With their team down 13 to 4 and the Tigers not having shown them much, some Detroit fans had left by the bottom of the inning. But there were still enough for overflow in the outfield, and Casey led off with another ground rule double. Jimmy Barrett beat out a slow grounder to third. Gleason then singled to center to score Casey. The crowd livened, as Holmes, Dillon, and Elberfeld all doubled. “The tremendous shouts that were sent up evidently unnerved Pitcher Dowling. As each hit went out a mighty cheer went up that was enough to make most any one lose his nerve.”10 Five runs were now in; it was 13-9.

By this time Duffy was feeling uneasy. He came in from center field and replaced Dowling with Bert Husting. Husting, who wasn’t fully warmed up, uncorked a wild pitch, but settled down to retire Kid Nance for the first out.

As the inning progressed, the crowd had pressed closer to the diamond. Duffy protested, and umpire Jack Sheridan ordered the fans back. The game was delayed a few minutes as the Detroit players “ran out to push back the throng in order to afford the Milwaukee outfielders a chance to chase some of the terrific drives that were being sent out.”11 Although the delay gave Husting a chance to warm up, he walked the next batter, Buelow. Frisk followed with a single to left, scoring Elberfeld. 13-10.

Casey was next up and beat out a bunt down the third base line to load the bases. Husting was able to fan Barrett for the second out. Gleason then hit a hard shot to Burke at third base. But Burke botched the play and Buelow scored to make it 13-11. It quickly became 13-12 when Burke couldn’t get an out on Holmes’ slow roller and Frisk scored.

Dillon was up again. The big first baseman already had three ground-rule doubles on the day, and made it a fourth when he ripped a 2-2 pitch into the crowd in left field. Casey and Gleason romped home with the tying and winning runs.

Pandemonium broke loose at Bennett Park. The crowd quickly overtook the field and “a dozen crazy fans picked [Dillon] up and carried him about the diamond on their shoulders, while everybody assured his neighbor that he had never in his life seen anything so wonderful.”12 The Detroit Tribune writer waxed rhapsodic: “The riotously jubilant vocalization of 10,000 throats let loose in one simultaneous sub-aerial explosion, [making] the old earth’s enveloping atmosphere heave and billow clear to its surface 50 miles away, and no doubt it is tumultuous yet.”13

And as of this writing in late 2015, the Tigers’ feat on their first day of play in the brand-new American League is still the biggest ninth inning game-winning comeback in major league baseball history.

Across Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, there was astonishment as the wire reports rolled in. Brewer secretary Fred Gross was in the process of preparing a telegram recounting the victory to club president Matthew Killilea, who was in Arizona for health reasons. Before Gross could send the telegram he received a phone call telling him the Tigers had won the game. Gross assured the caller there had to be a mistake, as Detroit would have had to score ten runs to win. When told this was exactly what had happened, Gross replied that he needed to hear from Duffy, then presupposed a reason for the apparent collapse: “The men all must be injured for a team to make ten runs in one inning. I will wire Duffy to take care of the men until they recover.”14

Only the Brewers’ pride had been injured by the epic Detroit rally. Although some in Milwaukee talked of a protest because of crowd interference, the Evening Wisconsin was philosophical: “It was indeed hard for Duffy to lose a game in that manner, but such is baseball and will ever be that way. It only goes to prove once more that baseball is the one sport that is absolutely honest in every line of playing.”15

Box score

As a box score for this 1901 game is not yet available at Retrosheet.org or Baseball-Reference.com, the box score from the May 4, 1901, edition of Sporting Life is reproduced below. (For reasons lost in the mists of time Sporting Life showed Milwaukee as batting in the bottom of the innings, even though Detroit, as the home team, did. This inconsistency also appears from time to time in other, but not all, Sporting Life box scores.)

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank fellow SABR members Marc Okkonen and Jonathan Frankel (and any others whose emails I might have accidentally deleted) for help in obtaining material for this article.

Notes

The largest crowd ever to attend a baseball game in Detroit1 streamed into Bennett Park to see the Tigers make their major-league debut against the Milwaukee Brewers. A parade complete with bands, city officials in carriages, local fraternal organizations, and the players from both teams had traveled up Michigan Avenue, while at Bennett Park a crowd of 10,023 — some 1,500 greater than seating capacity — was spilling over from the stands into the outfield.

A band of heavy rain that lingered for days across the Northeast provided the upstart loop with an inauspicious start, causing postponement of three of the four season openers scheduled for April 24, including the game in Detroit. But the next day offered a bright, clear sky and a modest breeze, and although the field was still wet and the basepaths muddy, a fine day for a ballgame.

Pregame ceremonies began with the visiting Brewers marching onto the field, followed by the Tigers, who paraded before the grandstand in bright red wool coats and doffed their caps to the cheering crowd. “Oom Paul,” the club’s unofficial mascot and good-luck charm since the previous year, when the Tigers won 21 of 22 with the dog in attendance, was brought out to home plate to a roar of delight from the stands. There were a handful of speeches and the presentation of an oversized cup to team owner James Burns and manager/co-owner George Stallings. Finally, City Council President Jacob J. Haarer, filling in for Mayor William Maybury, tossed out the ceremonial first pitch to Charlie Bennett, the beloved catcher for the old National League Detroit Wolverines. The Wolverines had folded 13 years ago, but Detroit baseball fans still held the heroes of the 1887 world champions in high regard.

The umpires, in consideration of a rope stretched across the outfield to corral the fans standing or sitting on the outfield grass, informed both clubs that a ball hit into the crowd would be ruled a double. As the band struck up “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” the Tigers sprinted onto the field. Roscoe Miller, a 24-year-old right-hander who had won 19 games the previous year in Detroit’s final season as a minor-league club, took the mound.

Whether it was the sodden field, the team’s inability to practice for a week due to the unrelenting weather, or simply Opening Day jitters, from the moment the game began the Tigers hardly looked to be ready for the major leagues. Kid Elberfeld, who’d played two seasons in the National League, for Philadelphia and Cincinnati, made a “gorgeous fumble”2 on a ball hit to short by the first Milwaukee batter, Irv Waldron, and was charged with an error. Although Detroit managed to escape the opening frame without surrendering a run, three more errors in the second inning handed Milwaukee a 2-0 lead. The Tigers, for their part, couldn’t get anything going against Pink Hawley, who had jumped to the new league after compiling an 18-18 won-lost record for the last-place New York Giants in 1900.

The third inning saw the Brewers score five runs on an error, four hits, a walk, and a sacrifice. This was the end for Miller, who was replaced by Emil Frisk during the inning. Miller had not pitched particularly well, but five errors behind him, including three by Elberfeld, had also let him down. The inning ended with the Brewers up 7-0.

Detroit finally got on the scoreboard in the bottom of the fourth on an error followed by a ground-rule double into the crowd by Frank “Pop”Dillon. Elberfeld drove Dillon home with another ground-rule double. The Tigers added another run in the fifth when Doc Casey scored on a Kid Gleason double.

After six innings the score stood at 7-3, but the Brewers struck again in the seventh, scoring three more runs on two doubles and a single after two men were out.

At this point Milwaukee player-manager Hugh Duffy, perhaps thinking the game was safely in hand, took out Hawley, replacing him with Pete Dowling. Hawley had been pitching well, having surrendered only five hits and walking one in his six innings on the mound, but Dowling had been “Detroit’s Jonah all last season,”3 beating the Tigers four times, twice by shutout. Dowling retired the Tigers without a hit in the seventh inning.

Milwaukee continued its assault in the eighth, plating three more runs on two walks, three hits, and another Detroit error. The Tigers stirred a bit in their half of the inning, as Dowling gave up four hits and one run, thanks to another ground-rule double by Pop Dillon.

The Brewers were retired in order in the top of the ninth, and with the score now 13-4 the Tigers came to bat for a final time. Many in the grandstand were already heading for the exits, “growling profanely,”4 as Doc Casey stepped into the batter’s box.

Casey drove the ball into the overflow crowd in the outfield for a ground-rule double. Jimmy Barrett followed by beating out a slow roller to third. Kid Gleason then singled to center, scoring Casey. Renewed enthusiasm swept the stands, and the roar of the crowd increased in volume with each successive blow by the Tigers. Ducky Holmes followed with a double, scoring Barrett. Dillon hit his third double of the game, scoring Gleason and Holmes. Kid Elberfeld stroked another double to right field, pushing Dillon across the plate. Five runs had now scored with none yet out.

Hugh Duffy came in from center field and removed Pete Dowling in favor of Bert Husting. Husting immediately uncorked a wild pitch, allowing Elberfeld to advance to third, before retiring Kid Nance on an infield grounder for the first out of the inning.

The charged crowd in the outfield pressed closer toward the diamond. The game was delayed a few minutes as the Detroit players ran out to push the throng back behind the ropes to afford the Milwaukee outfielders a fair chance at getting to long drives. When the game resumed, Husting walked the next batter, Fritz Buelow. Pitcher Emil Frisk followed with a single to left, scoring Elberfeld for the Tigers’ 10th run and sixth of the inning.

“Hats were being thrown in the air, coats were flying and everyone was yelling themselves hoarse. One man in the bleachers threw up his coat and when it came down it was in two sections, but he didn’t care so long as Detroit was hitting the ball, and the chances are that he forgot he ever had a coat.”5

Doc Casey, batting for the second time in the inning, laid down a bunt, reaching first just ahead of the throw by diving head-first into the bag. With the bases now loaded, Jimmy Barrett came to bat but went down on strikes for the second out. Kid Gleason then hit a savage grounder that Brewers third baseman Jimmy Burke fumbled, allowing Buelow to score and keeping Detroit’s improbable rally alive. The Tigers pulled within one run when Ducky Holmes beat out a slow roller to Burke that scored Frisk.

It was now up to Frank Dillon. The first baseman already had three ground-rule doubles, including one earlier this inning. With the count at two balls and two strikes, Dillon drove a pitch down the left-field foul line and into the crowd, while Casey and Gleason raced home with the tying and winning runs.

With Dillon’s hit, pandemonium broke loose at Bennett Park. “Roaring, howling and screaming,”6 the crowd poured out of the stands onto the field. “The crowd almost tore [Dillon] to pieces, and finally he was picked up and carried around the field on the shoulders of some of the excited spectators.”7

The Detroit Tigers were winners in their American League debut by the virtue of, as one account described it, “the most magnificent batting rally ever seen.”8

This article appeared in “Tigers By The Tale: Great Games at Michigan and Trumbull” (SABR, 2016), edited by Scott Ferkovich.

Sources

Books

Bak, Richard, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium  (Detroit: Wayne State University Books, 1998).

McCollister, John, The Tigers and Their Den: The Official Story of the Detroit Tigers (Boulder, Colorado: Taylor Trade Publishing, 1999).

Newspapers

Detroit Journal.

Detroit News.

Detroit Tribune.

Evening Wisconsin (Milwaukee).

Milwaukee Daily News.

Milwaukee Journal.

Milwaukee Sentinel.

Minneapolis Journal.

Sporting Life.

The Sporting News.

Notes

The White Sox had been mired in fourth place, 7½ games behind the league-leading and defending AL champion Philadelphia Athletics, after losing to the sad-sack Boston Americans on August 1. But White Sox pitchers tossed shutout victories in the next three games against Boston.1 Chicago then won five straight from the Athletics and three more from the pennant-contending New York Highlanders. The 17-game homestand concluded with a nine-inning scoreless tie against New York.2

The White Sox kept winning on the road, taking another three games from Boston and four more from the Highlanders. The 18 straight wins vaulted the White Sox into first place with a 68-43-2 record, 4½ games ahead of the Athletics. The Nationals were seventh with a 43-66-1 mark.

Patterson had thrown shutouts in the third and seventh games of Chicago’s winning streak, and he entered the series opener in Washington having tossed 21 consecutive scoreless innings.3 The 29-year-old right-hander had won his last four decisions, raising his record to 8-6.

In contrast, Washington starter Cy Falkenberg (10-14) had lost his last five decisions. At 6-foot-5 and just 180 pounds, Falkenberg was the tallest pitcher in the big leagues.4 The 26-year-old righty battled control problems early in his career, and in 1906 he led the majors in wild pitches and tied for the league lead in walks.

The 4,200 fans in attendance, enduring a sweltering Thursday afternoon,5 gave the White Sox a “royal reception” for their impressive winning streak when they came onto the field.6 The crowd also cheered respected umpire Silk O’Loughlin when he first appeared,7 although their support for him was short-lived.

Neither team scored in the first three innings, as Patterson limited the Nationals to three hits and Falkenburg scattered two hits and three walks.

Washington’s normally reliable third baseman Lave Cross was charged with a throwing error on Jiggs Donahue’s grounder leading off the fourth.8 After Patsy Dougherty sacrificed Donahue to second, Dougherty advanced to third on catcher Billy Sullivan’s infield single. According to the Washington Times, Falkenberg picked Sullivan off first base by a wide margin. But O’Loughlin – working the game solo − called Sullivan safe, much to the chagrin of the fans.9 The disputed call became even more contentious when Donahue tagged up and scored on third baseman Lee Tannehill’s long fly ball.10

The 40-year-old Cross, who broke into the big leagues in 1887 with the Louisville Colonels, singled to open the bottom of the fourth. One out later, right fielder Charlie Hickman bounced into a force out at second. Nationals 27-year-old player-manager Jake Stahl, hitting just .203 in what was the worst season of his big-league career,11 tripled to center field, scoring Hickman. Stahl’s blast tied the game, 1-1, and snapped Patterson’s streak of 24 consecutive scoreless innings.

Falkenberg walked Chicago player-manager Fielder Jones with one out in the fifth. After second baseman Isbell singled, George Davis drove in Jones with a bad-hop single over the head of first baseman Stahl and Isbell advanced to third.12 When Donahue fouled out to Stahl, Davis tagged up and took off for second, drawing a high throw that nearly went over the head of rookie shortstop Dave Altizer and allowed Isbell, who had also tagged up, to race home safely.13 Davis was erased in the ensuing rundown, ending the inning. The clever tactic—Dougherty was on deck with a .215 batting average—gave the White Sox a 3-1 lead.

Pitching with the lead again, Patterson posted the first one-two-three frame of the contest in the bottom of the fifth.

Chicago tacked on a run in the seventh. Right fielder Ed Hahn reached on a one-out single and went to second on a passed ball. After Jones fouled out, Isbell lined a single to center for his third hit of the game, scoring Hahn.

Falkenberg settled down and retired the final seven White Sox batters in the game.

Patterson held Washington to only one hit in innings five through eight.14 In the bottom of the ninth, Hickman slammed a one-out double off the center-field wall for his third hit of the game. It was all the offense the Nationals could muster, as Patterson retired Stahl and rookie pinch-hitter Howard Wakefield to nail down Chicago’s 19th win in a row.15 The 4-1 victory moved the White Sox 5½ games ahead of the Athletics and 7 in front of the third-place Highlanders and Cleveland Naps.

Despite being dubbed the Hitless Wonders for their league-worst .230 team batting average, the 1906 White Sox still cobbled together the AL’s third-best offense by leading the league in walks, hit-by-pitches, and sacrifices, and being the most difficult team to strike out. During the White Sox’ historic winning streak, they outscored the opposition 100-24. As a testament to its small-ball skills, Chicago averaged 5.3 runs on just 7.6 hits per game.16

The Pale Hose used just five pitchers during the streak; starters failed to go the distance just twice.17 Twenty-five-year-old Ed Walsh enjoyed a breakout performance, winning all seven of his starts, tossing five shutouts, and allowing just two runs in 63 innings pitched.18 Doc White, en route to posting a league-leading 1.52 ERA, threw a pair of shutouts and won each of his five starts, while Patterson won three games and surrendered only one run in 29 innings pitched.19 “[Fielder] Jones’s flingers have rounded to such rare form as to make them the most valuable bunch of gunners in the country, not excepting the artillery corps of the Chicago Cubs,” raved the Washington Post.20

The White Sox hit just .240 during the streak, but a higher slugging percentage than normal helped boost their run production.21 As was the case throughout the season, shortstop Davis, a future Hall of Famer, led the way offensively. He hit .290 with a team-leading 13 RBIs and 6 stolen bases. A pair of outfielders whose contracts had been purchased from the Highlanders earlier in the season, Dougherty and Hahn, made significant contributions during the streak.22 Dougherty led the White Sox with eight extra-base hits and trailed only Davis with nine RBIs. Hahn, Chicago’s leadoff hitter for all 19 victories, led the team with 14 runs scored.

The second game of the Chicago-Washington series was rained out on August 24 and rescheduled as part of a doubleheader the next day. The White Sox took a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth of the first game with Walsh on the mound for his third inning of relief.23 The Nationals shocked the White Sox by torching Walsh for five consecutive hits, snapping Chicago’s streak with a 5-4 walk-off victory.24

The White Sox’ lead in the standings dissolved when the Highlanders reeled off 15 consecutive victories from August 29 to September 8, 10 of which came against tail-enders Washington and Boston. At the close of play on September 23, Chicago was in second place, one game behind the Highlanders. The White Sox won seven of their next eight games and clinched the pennant on October 3, an offday.25 Chicago finished with a 93-58-3 record, three games ahead of the second-place Highlanders.26

The White Sox were considered heavy underdogs when they faced the 116-win Chicago Cubs in an all-Chicago World Series. To the surprise of many, the White Sox won the series in six games, largely because of their outstanding pitching. The Pale Hose used just four pitchers in the series: Walsh, Nick Altrock, White, and Frank Owen, all of whom contributed to the 19-game winning streak. (Patterson’s season ended on September 8 because of arm problems.27) White Sox pitchers limited the vaunted Cubs offense to just eight earned runs in the World Series, rendering the South Siders’ .198 team batting average moot.28

Chicago’s 19-game winning streak stood as the major-league record (since 1901) until the New York Giants won 26 consecutive games in 1916. The White Sox retained the AL record until the 2002 Oakland Athletics won 20 games in row.

As of the start of the 2026 season, the 1916 Giants still held the NL record and the AL record was 22 wins in a row by the 2017 Cleveland Indians. The White Sox’ 1906 streak, which was tied by the 1947 New York Yankees, ranked as the fifth longest in the NL or AL since 1901.29

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Stathead.com, and the SABR biographies of Roy Patterson, Frank Smith, and Jake Stahl. Unless otherwise noted, all play-by-play information for the first five innings of this game was taken from the article “Comiskey’s Squad Takes Lead” on page 1 of the August 23, 1906, Sporting Extra edition of the Chicago Daily News, and play-by-play information for the remainder of the game was based on the article “Chicago Outplayed Nationals in Yesterday’s Game” on page 9 of the August 24, 1906, edition of the Washington Evening Star.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WS1/WS1190608230.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1906/B08230WS11906.htm

Photo credit

Roy Patterson, courtesy of the Detroit Public Library.

Notes

1 The shutouts were tossed by Doc White, Ed Walsh, and Roy Patterson.

2 Tie games were not suspended or replayed at the time, but player statistics counted. Ties do not end a winning streak in baseball. Chicago went 15-1-1 on its 17-game homestand, which began on July 27 and wrapped up on August 13.

3 Patterson had the distinction of throwing the inaugural pitch and earning the first win in American League history, kickstarting a 20-win season in his rookie year of 1901.

4 The only other 6-foot-5 player in the majors in 1906 was Cincinnati Reds catcher Larry McLean.

5 The daytime high was 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 Celsius).

6 “Comiskey’s Squad Takes Lead,” Chicago Daily News, August 23, 1906: 1.

7 “Nationals Beaten; Sox Break Record,” Washington Times, August 24, 1906: 8.

8 Cross had the highest fielding percentage (.952) among qualified third basemen in the AL.

9 “Nationals Beaten; Sox Break Record.”

10 “Chicago Outplayed Nationals in Yesterday’s Game,” Washington Evening Star, August 24, 1906: 9.

11 Stahl was in his second season as Washington’s player-manager. The young skipper had a stressful season in 1906. Stahl’s close friend and teammate Joe Cassidy died in March, and when the Nationals fell out of the pennant race, he became “consumed with trying to right the fast-sinking team.” Washington finished in seventh place with nine fewer wins than in 1905. Stahl finished the 1906 season with negative Baseball-Reference Wins Above Replacement (bWAR) and was stripped of his managerial duties.

12 “Sox Break Big-League Record, Winning Again,” Washington Post, August 24, 1906: 18.

13 “Chicago Outplayed Nationals in Yesterday’s Game.”

14 The author deduced this from the play-by-play in the Chicago Daily News and the box score.

15 Wakefield had a son in 1921, Dick Wakefield, who went on to become the major leagues’ first bonus baby.

16 The averages exclude the nine-inning scoreless tie during the 19-game winning streak. The White Sox averaged 3.7 runs and 7.4 hits per game for the entire season.

17 The two games without a complete game were started by Roy Patterson (August 16) and Frank Owen (August 17). The five pitchers combined for a stunning 0.824 WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched).

18 Walsh had a breakout season in 1906 thanks to the development of a devastating spitball. He won 11 straight decisions from June 30 to August 22 and finished the season 17-13 with a 1.88 ERA. Walsh tossed a major-league-leading 10 shutouts.

19 The two other pitchers to take to the mound in the 19-game winning streak were Frank Owen and Nick Altrock. Owen won three games, completed three of his four starts, and surrendered 11 runs in 29 innings pitched. Nick Altrock earned the win in his only appearance, an eight-inning relief stint against the lowly Boston Americans on August 16. The game story in the Chicago Tribune reported that Altrock “had been out of form for some days.” He had lost four straight starts just before the winning streak began. “White Sox Enjoy a Batting Bee,” Chicago Tribune, August 17, 1906: 10.

20 “Sox Break Big-League Record, Winning Again.”

21 The White Sox had a slash line of .230 (BA) / .301 (OBP) / .286 (SLG) during the season and .240 / .310 / .324 during the winning streak.

22 The White Sox purchased Hahn’s contract from the Highlanders on May 10. Dougherty’s contract was purchased on June 6.

23 Frank Smith started for Chicago. It was his first appearance since July 12—he was kept out of the rotation so he could work on controlling his spitball. Smith gave up two runs on six hits and one walk in six innings, striking out five batters. He was removed after giving up two runs, cutting Chicago’s lead to 3-2.

24 “Washington Stops Winning Streak of Chicago White Sox, Washington Post, August 26, 1906: 1.

25 Chicago clinched the pennant when New York lost the second game of a twin bill on October 3 against Philadelphia.

26 The Nationals finished in 7th place with a 55-95-1 record, 37½ games behind the White Sox.

27 Patterson ended the season 10-7 with a 2.09 ERA (121 ERA+). He made only 19 more big-league appearances because of arm issues and was sent down to the American Association’s Minneapolis Millers in 1908. Patterson pitched in the minor leagues until 1922 when he was 45 years old.

28 The White Sox committed 15 errors in the World Series, resulting in 10 unearned runs. The Cubs hit .196 in the series.

29 As of the start of the 2026 season, the third longest winning streak was 21 games by the 1935 Chicago Cubs. The fourth longest was 20 games by the 2002 Oakland Athletics.

The Senators, who were on the fringe of the pennant race tied for fourth place, started their nonpareil, Walter Johnson at League Park in Cleveland, against a right-hander decorated with the name Zerah Zequiel Hagerman, who preferred to be called “Rip” for obvious reasons. Hagerman was a lanky Kansas farm boy like Johnson, but the resemblance ended there.

Hagerman opened the top of the first by walking Washington leadoff man Danny Moeller. After Eddie Foster flied out, Moeller took second on a balk. By the rules of the time, he was credited with a stolen base; it is not a steal today. (The scoring rule was changed in 1955.)1 Clyde Milan walked, and he and Moeller executed a double steal. When Cleveland catcher Steve O’Neill threw to second, Milan got into a rundown while Moeller kept going around third to score, credited with two steals on the play. Milan escaped the pickle to complete a successful theft of second.

Hagerman doled out his third walk, to Howie Shanks. Then the pitcher, asleep or shell-shocked, held the ball while Milan swiped third. Chick Gandil delivered Washington’s first hit, a triple to left-center that brought home Milan and Shanks. Cleveland left fielder Jack Graney’s poor throw allowed Gandil to score as well. At this point manager Lee Fohl mercifully relieved Hagerman, who had been ripped for four runs on one hit, three walks, an error, and five stolen bases.

The new pitcher, lefty Sam Jones, got Tom Connolly to fly to left for the second out. But Eddie Ainsmith singled to center, then stole second and went to third on catcher O’Neill’s wild throw. Jones walked George McBride to keep the line moving. When Jones tried to pick McBride off first, the runner fled toward second and first baseman Jay Kirke’s throw hit him in the back. Ainsmith raced home on the play, and Kirke’s error allowed McBride to keep running. Center fielder Billy Southworth retrieved the ball, but his throw to third was wild, and McBride scored.

The official scorer ruled the Little League play a double steal, Washington’s seventh and eighth thefts of the inning, with the Indians’ third and fourth errors charged to Kirke and Southworth. Johnson, the Senators’ ninth batter, flied out to end the farce.

Johnson walked to the mound with a 6-0 lead. The “King of Pitchers” had roiled the baseball world in the offseason when he signed with Chicago of the outlaw Federal League, then turned around and re-signed with Washington. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey had kicked in $6,000 to sweeten the Senators’ offer and keep Johnson from joining the rival Chicago club.2

Pitching just 18 days after the birth of his first child, Walter Jr., Johnson knew what to do with a big lead: He coasted. “Johnson didn’t exert himself in the least — he just shoved the ball over the pan and let the Indians hit it,” the Cleveland Leader’s Charles W. Swan wrote.3 Cleveland managed only two singles in six innings while the Senators built their lead to 8-0. Assured of his 15th win, Johnson retired to rest his arm. Indicative of his effort, he did not strike out a single batter for the only time in any of his starts that season.

Washington’s 38-year-old coach and comedian Nick Altrock finished up, making his only appearance of the year. The ancient lefty surrendered four inconsequential runs in the last three innings as the Senators cruised to an 11-4 victory that lifted their record to one game over .500. The Washington Post’s Stanley T. Milliken commented, “A bush league club from the Carolinas could have put up a stiffer fight than did these alleged Indians.”4

The Senators’ sudden surge of larceny appears to be a fluke. They were not a running team; the club finished fifth in the American League in stolen bases. And Cleveland’s young catcher, Steve O’Neill, threw out 42 percent of basestealers, close to the league average. Only three of the thefts look like straight steals: the double steal by Moeller and Milan, and Ainsmith’s steal of second. According to newspaper accounts, the others were the result of a balk, a rundown, a pitcher’s snooze, and a botched pickoff.

The Philadelphia Phillies tied Washington’s record on July 7, 1919, in even more fluky fashion.5 The last-place Phillies went into the ninth inning trailing the Giants, 10-2. New York pitcher Pol Perrit and catcher Mike Gonzalez evidently ignored the Philadelphia baserunners. Two certified leadfoots, Gavvy Cravath and Fred Luderus, each stole second and third during the inning, and Forrest Cady and Eddie Sicking did the same as the Phillies added three meaningless runs.

“The only reason we got those three runs in the ninth was because nobody cared whether we did or not,” the pseudonymous Jim Nasium wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer.6 After the 1919 season, baseball’s rules committee agreed not to award such “joke steals,” and the “defensive indifference” rule was born.7

Sources

In addition to those cited in the notes, I consulted game stories in the Washington Times and Washington Evening Star.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE191507190.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1915/B07190CLE1915.htm

Notes

1 Dennis Bingham and Thomas R. Heitz, “Rules and Scoring,” in John Thorn and Pete Palmer, eds., Total Baseball, Second Edition (New York: Warner, 1991), 2602.

2 Henry W. Thomas, Walter Johnson, Baseball’s Big Train (Washington: Phenom Press, 1995), 133-138.

3 Charles W. Swan, “Sixth Straight for Griffmen,” Washington Herald, July 20, 1915: 9. Swan, who worked for the Cleveland Leader, also covered the game for the Herald.

4 Stanley T. Milliken, “Altrock Relieves Johnson After Game Is Made Sure,” Washington Post, July 20, 1915: 8.

5 The next-day stories in both the Philadelphia Ledger and New York Times list eight steals. Baseball-almanac.com cites these two games as tied for most stolen bases in one inning with 8. However, baseball-reference.com lists only seven stolen bases in the game.

6 Jim Nasium, “Phils Lose 2 More, Making 11 in a Row,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 8, 1919: 14.

7 “Cut Out the ‘Joke’ Steals,” Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1920: 15.

Cincinnati’s Fred Toney yielded only two hits1 in 11 innings before giving way to Pete Schneider, who gave up just one hit in five frames. Boston ace Dick Rudolph threw one more inning than Toney but gave up 11 hits. Rudolph made superlative fielding plays to keep the game scoreless; the last such play resulted, however, in a hand injury that required Tom Hughes to pitch after Pete Compton pinch-hit for Rudolph.

With foul weather plaguing the Hub, the Braves had not played since June 7, and the Reds had not taken the diamond since June 6. The game started late to let the field, “a quagmire,”2 dry, but the delay did not faze Rudolph, who fanned the three Cincinnati batters in the top of the first.

In the second inning, Boston captain Johnny Evers, a record umpire-baiter,3 could not stay out of the fray even on a day when he was too injured to play. “Dick Egan was called out on strikes, and started to sputter. Johnny Evers … directed his remarks at Pitcher Toney. … Johnny told Pitcher Toney that he, Johnny, had once fired him.”4

Umpire Ernest Quigley ejected Evers for insulting the visiting pitcher. As Cubs manager in 1913, Evers had sold Toney, owner at the time of a 2-2 record with a 6.00 ERA, to the minors. Three years later, Evers tried to get Toney off his game, but his antics backfired. “In great measure the laurels of the day swung to Toney[, who] was in rare form.”5

Toney’s 11 innings represented less than his average appearance in his preceding starts, a 16-inning complete-game win on May 31 followed by a 10-inning complete-game win on June 5. In three starts, Toney pitched 37 innings and gave up just 17 hits. “Pitching a team-high 300 innings in 1916, Toney posted a 2.28 ERA but compil[ed] a 14-17 record. In August of that year he stated that he could be a 25-game winner if the Reds would give him the four runs per game he felt he deserved, instead of the 2.5 runs he thought he was receiving.”6

Boston got its first hit in the bottom of the second inning when Ed Konetchy singled. Konetchy stole second but stayed stranded after Toney struck out two.

In the top of the third, former Brave Buck Herzog, the Reds’ player-manager, singled before Rudolph started a 1-6-3 double play via future Hall of Famer Rabbit Maranville.

In the top of the fourth inning, left fielder Greasy Neale singled. Neale, later a starter for the 1919 world champion Reds and coach of the 1948 and 1949 NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles, lit out for second too soon. Rudolph threw to first. Boston tagged out Neale in a rundown, but Neale would stay aggressive.

In the bottom of the sixth, Toney plunked Braves backstop Walt Tragesser. After consecutive fielder’s choices, Boston center fielder Joe Connolly walked, but right fielder Joe Wilhoit hit into yet another fielder’s choice to strand two mates.

In the top of the ninth inning, Neale singled again, and Rudolph had him picked off again. But bad throws by Konetchy and Maranville sent Neale to third with two outs. To the plate strode Hal Chase, who would bat a league-leading .339 in 1916. “It was a narrow squeak for Rudolph as Chase all but got an infield single on a slow roller toward third. Only just in time did Rudolph secure the ball and get his man at first while a Red was legging it across the plate.”7

In the top of the 10th, Cincinnati got two on thanks to a single by first baseman Fritz Mollwitz and an intentional walk to Herzog after a wild pitch, but Baldy Louden hit into a fielder’s choice to end the rally.

Boston had major threats in each of the first three extra innings. In the bottom of the 10th, Egan walked. Batting for Tragesser, Zip Collins reached on a fielder’s choice/sacrifice when Reds catcher Ivey Wingo threw too late to second to try to cut down the lead runner. Declining to bat for Rudolph with two on and none out, Stallings ordered a bunt. But Wingo “made a beautiful play on what looked like a perfect sacrifice by Rudolph, forcing [Ed] Fitzpatrick, who was sent in to run in place of Egan, at third.”8

In the 11th, Wilhoit hit a leadoff double, Boston’s only extra-base hit, which, “[o]n a dry field … would have been good for three bases.”9 Sherry Magee popped out to Wingo, then Herzog took Konetchy’s grounder and gunned down Wilhoit at third. Facing his final batter, Toney retired Red Smith.

In the top of the 12th, the Reds loaded the bases with two outs after getting multiple hits in an inning for the only time in the game. Herzog replaced Toney with pinch-hitter Tommy Clarke, who “came so close to breaking up the game that there was no fun in it. Clarke hit the ball hard and on a line. It was whistling past Rudolph when the latter stuck out his bare hand and stopped the burning drive dead to toss out the hitter.”10

The game’s great controversy occurred in the bottom of the inning. Fitzpatrick walked. Hank Gowdy, resting to heal a spike injury, had replaced Tragesser behind the plate after Zip Collins pinch-hit, and sacrificed Fitzpatrick to second. With Rudolph already throwing 12 innings and now having a hurting hand, Braves manager George Stallings turned to Compton.

Pete Compton hit a swinging bunt, but “[t]he speedy Ivy Wingo was on the ball like a shadow”11 and “had gone nearly half way to first to retrieve the ball,”12 which he threw to Mollwitz at first. With “a good lead off second”13 and Wingo having vacated the plate, Fitzpatrick never stopped running, trying to end the game by scoring from second base on an infield out.

But Cincinnati third baseman Heinie Groh “beat Fitz to the plate, took Mollwitz’s return throw, which was high, and, stooping, made a stab at Fitz, who claimed he touched the rubber with his hand.”14

The conditions clearly complicated seeing what had actually happened. “In a swirl of mud, Fitzy, Heinie and the ball reached the plate at the same identical moment [as did] Umpire Quigley. As Heinie was doing a back flip-flop and Fitzy was sliding over, Umpire Quigley dropped his arms in the manner generally known to signify ‘safe.’”15

Quigley’s signal seemingly ended the game.

But “before the jubilant Braves or chagrined Reds could say a word, Umpire Quigley … announced … that Fitzy was out because he had failed to touch the rubber.”16

Opinions differ on whether Fitzpatrick touched home, and whether Groh actually tagged Fitzpatrick at all, much less before he had hit the dish.

“Whether Fitzpatrick was safe or out, Heinie Groh made a great play in covering the plate.”17

Smith singled for the third and final Boston hit in the 14th. Three newspaper accounts say nothing of what transpired the rest of the game, which “wore along …before descending darkness and hunger called a halt.”18

This article appeared in “Braves Field: Memorable Moments at Boston’s Lost Diamond” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Bob Brady. To read more articles from this book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be seen on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BSN/BSN191606130.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1916/B06130BSN1916.htm

Notes