April 14, 1920: Spitball takes center stage as Stan Coveleski fires Cleveland’s first Opening Day shutout

In response to the new “freak delivery” rules implemented for 1920, American League President Ban Johnson allowed teams to designate two pitchers who could continue throwing the spitball for one more season,1 while the National League did not limit the number of authorized spitball pitchers.2 The thought was that the transitional year would give those pitchers who relied on the spitball a fair amount of time to develop a new arsenal.

The Cleveland Indians had little trouble determining their two spitballers for 1920, as only Stan Coveleski and Ray Caldwell used the pitch. On the contrary, the St. Louis Browns could pick just two of their three spitballers. They designated Urban Shocker and Bert Gallia, leaving Allen Sothoron without one of his top pitches.

The impact was evident on April 14, in front of 19,984 fans3 on Opening Day at Cleveland’s League Park. Coveleski, with his dancing and darting spitball in tow, allowed only five hits throughout the afternoon, and his offense backed him in a 5-0 victory over Sothoron and the Browns. It was the first Opening Day shutout in franchise history and the first step toward Cleveland’s first AL pennant and World Series victory.

Through careful veteran additions, the development of young pitchers, and a change in managerial control in the middle of the 1919 season, owner James C. Dunn’s Indians came into 1920 as a popular pick to win the AL pennant as baseball returned to a 154-game schedule following two shortened seasons due to World War I.

“Everyone is picking Cleveland to win the pennant. If we don’t, it probably will be a big disappointment,” said manager Tris Speaker, who led the Indians to a 40-21 record after taking over managerial duties on July 19, 1919, and got the club to within 3½ games of the pennant.4

Temperatures hovered around 40 degrees on Opening Day 1920, leading fans in an overflow crowd to collect scorecards, newspapers, and peanut shells to start around 50 to 60 bonfires in the outfield grass.5 The 30-year-old Coveleski, not known as a strikeout artist, struck out seven in his fourth straight Opening Day assignment. The former Pennsylvania coal miner often used his side-arm spitter once he got two strikes on a batter6 and got through the game in 104 pitches without allowing a runner to reach third base.7 “Covey” fell only one strikeout shy of matching his career high for a nine-inning game,8 and his season-opening tally began his journey to an AL-leading 133 punchouts by the end of the year.9

He was likewise not known for his hitting (he carried a .178 batting average into 1920), but he and his treasured bat “Abie”10 helped spark Cleveland’s first offensive rally, which put the Indians on the path toward a franchise-record 856 runs for the season.11

The second-inning uprising came against the 26-year-old Sothoron, a 20-game winner in 1919, but without his spitball as 1920 began.

“Sothoron seemed bothered a bit by the restrictions on the pitchers imposed in the winter’s legislation. He looked awkward as he held the ball away from his glove or shirt,” Newspaper Enterprise Association sportswriter Fred Turbyville noted. “He used to be rubbing it against himself all the time. But on opening day he carefully took off his glove and held the ball at arm’s length when he rubbed it in his hands. He didn’t want to be canned from the game. This was all unnatural to him, and probably it made him feel as awkward as he looked.”12

Sothoron got out of a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the first, but Doc Johnston and Steve O’Neill led off the second with singles. After failing to lay down a sacrifice, Coveleski sent an RBI single down the right-field line. Jack Graney’s double into the overflow crowd scored another run, and Elmer Smith’s two-run single gave the Indians a 4-0 lead and more runs in one inning than any other AL team scored that day.13 The Browns could never get a rally going, even as Coveleski allowed three doubles. He held eventual AL batting champion George Sisler hitless in four at-bats, twice retiring him with a man on base.14

“When [Sothoron] could doctor the horsehide, he was one of the greatest puzzles in the league,” wrote the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Henry P. Edwards. “It was different yesterday. … He just had to stand up there and pitch curves and fast ones.”15

Sothoron tried to “bluff” spitballs in the first, but after umpire Billy Evans reminded Browns manager Jimmy Burke of the new rule, Sothoron pitched the rest of the game with traditional mechanics.16 Johnson had advised umpires to enforce the new rules without wiggle room. “I didn’t make the rules,” he said, “but I shall see that umpires enforce them.”17 Position players were also reminded before the game that they could incur a punishment by scuffing the ball in the dirt and returning it to the pitcher.18

The St. Louis Star suggested that Burke made a “grievous mistake” in leaving Sothoron off his list of approved spitball pitchers for 1920. Without his trick deliveries and pitching through less-than-ideal weather conditions, Sothoron surrendered 13 hits and walked three on Opening Day, but he bore down in jams – twice leaving the bases loaded and holding a man on third in two other innings, proving there was more to his past success than deceit. Altogether, Cleveland stranded 12 runners, and Burke showed support for his pitcher publicly, even after he tried to undo his original decision with the league office.

“Sothoron never has received the credit for being the great pitcher he really is,” Burke, a third-year manager, said. “When he was so successful last year, they said he was using the ‘emery ball,’ the ‘shiner,’ the ‘sailor,’ and everything else. Now, he is prevented from using any such stuff and is out to show he needs no such aids to be effective. The next time he tackles Cleveland, he will stand the Indians on their heads.”19

Before the game, the Browns had petitioned Johnson for a relaxation of the rule regarding how clubs could designate spitball pitchers, which initially declared only pitchers designated by a team at least 10 days prior to the season could use the pitch in 1920. Upon hearing St. Louis’s argument that the club made a mistake in submitting Gallia’s name, Johnson announced on April 20 that teams could interchange their approved spitballers by giving the league office five days’ notice.20

By the time Sothoron pitched next – in St. Louis against Cleveland on April 25 – he had his spitball back and looked more like his 1919 self during a 4-1 win. Sothoron went 6-1 against Cleveland in ’19 on his way to becoming St. Louis’s first 20-game winner since 1903.21 His success caught the attention of Dunn, who offered the Browns $15,000 and two players in a deal, but St. Louis owner Phil Ball refused to give up Sothoron during his breakout season. Dunn unsuccessfully tried to add several pitchers in 1919, believing his club was one standout starter away from winning the pennant.22

But Sothoron did not take another step forward in 1920. He ended the season at 8-15, his worst showing in four full campaigns with the Browns. The Boston Red Sox selected him off waivers early in 1921 but returned him to St. Louis after he posted a 13.50 ERA over two starts. Cleveland then gave him a try, and Sothoron rebounded, going 12-4 in 3½ months with the Indians in ’21.23

In Cleveland, what started and ended as an exciting season in 1920 had several trying moments throughout. On May 28, Coveleski’s 28-year-old wife, Mary, died unexpectedly, and tragedy struck the entire team on August 17 when shortstop Ray Chapman died after getting hit in the head by a pitch the day before.

Cleveland, however, persevered. The race for the pennant was tight from start to finish. The Indians never led or trailed by more than four games as the White Sox and Yankees made it a three-team battle. Cleveland’s 98-56 record gave the club a two-game cushion over Chicago and a three-game margin over New York. The Browns finished a distant fourth at 76-77.

In the NL, the Brooklyn Robins held a seven-game edge over the New York Giants to claim the pennant. Coveleski became the eighth pitcher in history to win three games in a World Series, allowing only two runs in 27 innings of work for a 0.67 ERA as the Indians won the best-of-nine Series in seven games. Perhaps because Coveleski and his spitball gained national attention during the World Series, baseball slightly relaxed its opinion on the spitball going into 1921, allowing 17 pitchers24 to continue using the pitch until retirement – including Coveleski and Sothoron.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent material and box scores. He also used information obtained from news coverage by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Star, and The Sporting News. Two books, Harry J. Dietz, Jr.’s Covey and Scott H. Longert’s The Best They Could Be, also provided valuable insights.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE192004140.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1920/B04140CLE1920.htm

Notes

1 AL spitballers nominated were Boston’s Allen Russell, Chicago’s Eddie Cicotte and Red Faber, Cleveland’s Coveleski and Caldwell, Detroit’s Dutch Leonard and Doc Ayers, New York’s Jack Quinn, and St. Louis’s Shocker and Gallia, who was sold to the Philadelphia Phillies in May. Neither the Philadelphia Athletics nor Washington Senators nominated a spitballer. Henry P. Edwards, “American League Clubs Nominate 10 Moist Delivery Pitchers for Season,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 13, 1920: 18.

2 NL spitballers for the season were Boston’s Dana Fillingim, Dick Rudolph, and Ray Keating, who was sold to the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League about two weeks later; Brooklyn’s Burleigh Grimes and Clarence Mitchell; Chicago’s Claude Hendrix; Cincinnati’s Ray Fisher; New York’s Phil Douglas; Philadelphia’s Brad Hogg, who a week later abruptly retired from baseball to practice law full time; and St. Louis’s Bill Doak, Marv Goodwin, and Óscar Tuero, a third-year veteran who pitched only two-thirds of an inning in 1920 and never pitched in the big leagues again. Pittsburgh did not designate a spitballer. “National Leaguers Dispose of Routine Matters at Meeting,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1920: 15.

3 Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet list the attendance at 25,000, as did a report in the St. Louis Star. Reports from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and St. Louis Post-Dispatch both stated the attendance as 19,984. The Sporting News also noted a crowd of slightly less than 20,000 in its April 22 edition. “Indians Making Good on All That Pre-Season Boosting,” The Sporting News, April 22, 1920: 1.

4 Henry L. Farrell, “‘They’re Off!’ Cry of the Fans as Races Start,” Brooklyn Daily Times, April 14, 1920: 8.

5 “Bands Blare While Furs and Fires Keep Fans From Freezing,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 15, 1920: 16.

6 “Sothoron Like a Boat Without a Rudder in Forest City Opener,” St. Louis Star, April 15, 1920: 24.

7 “Johnston Kills Base-Hits for Williams and Sisler in Sixth,” St. Louis Star, April 15, 1920: 24.

8 Coveleski struck out 10 batters over 12⅔ innings on May 15, 1918.

9 Coveleski’s 133 strikeouts matched his career high (1917) and were the fewest by an American League leader to date. Excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and the strike-shortened 1981 season, only three other years have seen an AL pitcher lead the league with fewer strikeouts (Tex Hughson and Bobo Newsom, 113 in 1942; Lefty Grove, 116 in 1925; and Walter Johnson, 130 in 1923).

10 “Bands Blare While Furs and Fires Keep Fans From Freezing.”

11 The best offensive season in Cleveland prior to 1920 was 1911, when they scored 692 runs. Three other AL teams set new single-season scoring marks in ’20 – the Yankees (838), Browns (797), and Senators (723). In 1921, Cleveland scored 925 runs, establishing a new franchise standard that remained until 1996 (952). Through 2023, Cleveland’s single-season record is 1,009 runs (1999).

12 Fred Turbyville, “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down,” Atlantic City Gazette-Review, April 19, 1920: 5.

13 On Opening Day, the White Sox beat the Tigers 3-2 and the Athletics beat the Yankees 3-1. The game between the Red Sox and Senators was postponed, and the following day, the Red Sox won, 7-6.

14 Sisler became the first Browns player to hit over .400, and his .407 mark outdistanced Speaker, who finished as the runner-up with a .388 average. Two years later, Sisler hit .420 to win a second batting title. No other player in franchise history ever hit .400.

15 “Indians Trim Browns in Opening Game, 5 to 0,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 15, 1920: 16.

16 “Sothoron Like a Boat Without a Rudder in Forest City Opener.”

17 “It’ll Be Costly for a Hurler to Rub Ball on His Uni Today,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 14, 1920: 14.

18 “Johnston Kills Base-Hits for Williams and Sisler in Sixth.”

19 “Brown-Cleveland Game Off; Sothoron Fails, Opening Day,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 15, 1920: 16.

20 “Sothoron Authorized to Hurl His Spitter,” St. Louis Star, April 20, 1920: 22.

21 Willie Sudhoff won 21 games in 1903. The only other 20-game winners in franchise history until that point were Red Donahue and Jack Powell, who each won 22 decisions in 1902.

22 Dunn made attempts to acquire Walter Johnson, Dutch Leonard, Carl Mays, and Scott Perry throughout the 1919 season. Henry P. Edwards, “Dunn Went Limit to Get Star Hurler to Strengthen Indians,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 25, 1919: 22.

23 Sothoron went 24-32 with a 3.98 ERA the rest of his career, making six appearances with Cleveland in 1922 and hurling for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1924 to ’26. He spent 1923 with the Louisville Colonels of the American Association.

24 The pitchers were Ayers, Caldwell, Coveleski, Doak, Douglas, Faber, Fillingim, Fisher, Goodwin, Grimes, Leonard, Mitchell, Quinn, Rudolph, Russell, Shocker, and Sothoron.