April 28, 1901: Overflow crowd aids White Sox’ record 23 singles in Clark Griffith’s AL debut

Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey anticipated that his outfit would be competitive and draw strong crowds during the American League’s first season as a declared major league in 1901, but even he was taken aback by how many fans descended upon South Side Park on April 28 for the first Sunday game of the season.

The one-year-old ballpark had an estimated capacity of 12,500, but with most Chicagoans off work, some 15,000 to 17,000 rooters made their way to 39th and Wentworth for the final meeting of the season-opening four-game series between the White Sox and the Cleveland Blues, causing chaos at the box office and on the field.

“I didn’t think things would come our way quite so fast,” Comiskey admitted, while also announcing plans to add more seats to his ballpark to avoid future fiascos.1

After paying customers filled “every cranny” of the grandstand, thousands more stood 10 to 15 rows deep in the outfield to watch the game, and more than 1,000 cranks were turned away or refunded because they couldn’t find a suitable vantage point after they passed through the entry gates.2

So many fans crammed onto the outfield grass that ground rules were needed, causing the game to start about 15 minutes late as team captains hammered out an agreement with umpire Tommy Connolly. The parties ultimately agreed that every fair ball hit into the overflow crowd would be ruled a single and any baserunners would advance one base. Therefore, as the Chicago Tribune observed, “dozens of flies which would have been easy outs became safe hits, and some drives, good for two or three bases, were only singles.”3 

In taking advantage of those rules, White Sox batters pounded Cleveland rookie starter Charles “Bock” Baker for 23 singles – an AL record that stood until 1928 – on the way to a 13-1 victory that gave Chicago pitcher Clark Griffith a win in his AL debut.4

The 22-year-old Baker struggled from the onset of his major-league debut, issuing three walks in the bottom of the first inning. Cleveland kept the White Sox from scoring in the first, but Chicago’s offense erupted for eight runs over the next three innings as the overflow crowd began to impact the game.

The White Sox scored three times in each of the second and third innings, sending more than a dozen men to the plate to jump ahead, 6-0. According to the Chicago Tribune, “five flies into the crowd” helped push across the runs in the second, showing how much impact the exuberant rooters had on the game.5 

Had Cleveland center fielder Frank Genins not made a strong throw home after Sam Mertes flied out with one down in the third, Chicago might have scored even more. With three runs already home, Griffith tagged up after the catch, but Genins fired a bullet to the plate for an inning-ending double play.6

Chicago added two runs on four singles and an error in the fourth and another run on four singles in the fifth for a commanding 9-0 lead.

Meanwhile, Griffith kept Cleveland’s offense at bay.

Only four Blues reached base in the first six innings – Ollie Pickering led off the game with Griffith’s only walk of the afternoon; Baker reached on an error in the third; Candy LaChance reached on an error in the fourth; and Bill Bradley dropped a fly into the center-field crowd for Cleveland’s first hit, also in the fourth.

Griffith’s pitching had the fans abuzz. He was greeted by a rousing ovation in the top of the first inning, and the cheers kept coming as he kept Cleveland off the scoreboard.7 The 31-year-old right-hander, who doubled as the White Sox manager, had established his popularity in Chicago after winning at least 21 games for the National League’s crosstown Cubs in six of the seven seasons between 1894 and 1900.

But Griffith had grown tired of the NL and strongly supported AL President Ban Johnson’s effort to establish a second major league. Johnson and Comiskey, Griffith’s first major-league manager with the 1891 St. Louis Browns of the American Association, enlisted his help in attracting NL players to the AL before the 1901 season, and dozens of players made the jump.8

“The National League is on the downhill, and their brake blocks are not working: they are now looking for a high board fence to head them off,” Griffith said about two months before the season. “I am done with them forever and will in a few days affix my signature to a paper which will place me comfortably as manager and pitcher for the Chicago White Stockings.”9

Cleveland finally pinched a rally off Griffith in the seventh when Bradley, Erve Beck, and Bill Hallman hit consecutive singles – none of which went into the crowd – for the Blues’ only run of the game.10 While falling to 1-3 with the loss, Cleveland had only seven hits, three of which sailed into the crowd. Of Chicago’s 23 hits, 13 landed among the spectators.11

Chicago added four more runs in the eighth, giving Griffith even more comfort in cruising to his first AL victory, which set the tone for his resurgent season. A year after going 14-13 – his worst showing in a full campaign – he finished 1901 with a 24-7 record and led the AL in winning percentage (.774) and shutouts (5). His efforts helped Chicago move to 3-1 with this win and later claim the first AL pennant with an 83-53 record and a four-game cushion over the Boston Americans.12 Cleveland finished seventh at 54-82.

Every player in Chicago’s lineup had at least one hit and one run.13 Fred Hartman led the charge with four singles, while Dave Brain, Frank Isbell, Mertes, Frank Shugart, and Billy Sullivan each had three. Isbell was the only White Sox batter without an RBI.

The hit parade gave the White Sox 50 hits in the four-game series with Cleveland. As of 2025, that remained the second-most hits Chicago has collected in the first four games of a season,14 and the second-most hits Cleveland has surrendered in the same span.15 As for Baker, he is the only pitcher since 1901 to allow 23 singles in a game, and the 23 hits he surrendered in his major-league debut are second only to Allan Travers, who appeared in the majors as a replacement player during the Detroit Tigers’ one-game strike in 1912. Travers gave up 26 hits to the Philadelphia Athletics in his lone professional appearance.

Baker first came to Cleveland with the Lake Shores minor-league team in August 1900 but reported to the Blues in 1901 overweight and pitched inconsistently during preseason exhibitions.16 He made the Opening Day roster, but Cleveland manager Jimmy McAleer released Baker immediately after this game.17

Baker made one more major-league appearance, a start for the Athletics on May 13 in a game better known for future Hall of Famer Eddie Plank’s major-league debut. In that outing, a 14-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, Baker allowed 11 runs (seven earned) on six walks and six hits over six innings before Plank relieved him.18 Baker, who had jumped a contract with the Class A St. Joseph (Missouri) Saints to join the A’s, was again quickly released,19 finishing his brief major-league career 0-2 with a 7.71 ERA and a 2.929 WHIP.20

Away from the field, Comiskey was hard at work making plans so his ballpark would not suffer the next time an unexpected “outpouring of baseball enthusiasm” flowed into it.21 Reporters grumbled about this game’s atmosphere: The Chicago Tribune described the scene as a “farce,” the Chicago Inter Ocean wrote that it “could hardly be called a ball game,” and the Cleveland Leader’s report noted that the crowd “marred the game.”22

After the fans had cleared the outfield, the Tribune noted that it “looked as if a flood had swept over it and deposited its debris everywhere. It was strewn thick with pop bottles, paper, cardboard boxes, and enough peanut shells to have fed an army.”23 There was little time to get the field back into playing shape, as the White Sox welcomed the 4-0 Detroit Tigers to South Side Park the next afternoon.

No owner, least of all one of a pennant contender, would likely want that sort of press for long, so Comiskey announced that he would begin construction on a new set of bleachers along the right-field foul line as soon as the four-game Tigers series ended.24 

Work on the expansion finished in June. The ballpark had a new capacity of 14,000, which still wasn’t enough space to accommodate two Sunday crowds in September (18,000 and 19,800).25 On July 1, 1910, the White Sox moved into the much larger Comiskey Park, which comfortably seated 24,900 for its opener.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown Jr. and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Clark Griffith, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, StatsCrew.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent statistics and the box scores. He also used information obtained from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Inter Ocean, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland Leader, Sporting Life, and The Sporting News.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA190104280.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1901/B04280CHA1901.htm

Notes

1 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win,” Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1901: 4.

2 “Opening of American League Season Here,” Cleveland Leader, April 29, 1901: 6.

3 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win.”

4 On July 29, 1928, Cleveland collected 24 singles as part of a 24-6 thrashing of the New York Yankees. Five years later, on May 16, 1933, the Washington Nationals had 25 singles in a 12-inning, 11-10 win over Cleveland. On August 28, 1992, the Milwaukee Brewers poked 26 singles in a 22-2 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays. The White Sox remain the only team from 1901 through 2024 to have 23 singles and no extra-base hits in a game. The 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers nearly duplicated the feat, collecting 22 singles without an extra-base hit on June 3 in a 13-5 win over the Cincinnati Reds.

5 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win.”

6 “Slaughtered and Released,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 29, 1901: 3.

7 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win.”

8 Edgar G. Brands, “Home Town Pays Homage to Radbourne and Griffith,” The Sporting News, May 8, 1941: 5.

9 “Griffith Confirms the Story,” Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1901: 18.

10 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win.”

11 “Griff’s Good Start,” Chicago Inter Ocean, April 29, 1901: 4.

12 The White Sox were the defending league champions, having won the pennant in 1900 when the AL was a Class A minor-league circuit.

13 Later in the season, the White Sox scored more runs in 10 other games but did not have more hits in a game until they recorded 24 hits in an 18-6 win over the Detroit Tigers on June 27, 1904.

14 The 1945 White Sox had 53 hits during a 4-0 start, while the 1919 and 2000 teams also had 50 hits in the first four games. In 1901 Chicago’s 53 hits were only the third-most for an AL franchise in its first four games, as the Tigers (61) and Milwaukee Brewers (51) had more.

15 In 2009, Cleveland’s pitchers allowed 54 hits as part of a 0-4 start to the season.

16 “Going to the Front,” Cleveland Leader, August 14, 1900: 6; “Weather Too Chilly,” Cleveland Leader, April 11, 1901: 6; “Practice Was Fast,” Cleveland Leader, April 17, 1901: 6.

17 “Slaughtered and Released.”

18 Plank surrendered three runs on three hits and two walks in the final two innings. He later made his first career start and earned the first of his 326 career wins on May 18.

19 “Won’t Get Pitcher Baker,” St. Joseph (Missouri) Gazette-Herald, May 8, 1901: 2; “Manager Mack Changes Team,” Philadelphia Times, May 15, 1901: 10.

20 As of 2025, Baker’s WHIP was the ninth-worst among pitchers with at least 14 career innings pitched. Atop the list is Bruno Haas, who had a 3.558 WHIP in 14 1/3 innings for the 1915 Athletics.

21 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win.”

22 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win”; “Griff’s Good Start”; “Opening of American League Season Here.”

23 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win.”

24 “Big Crowd Sees Champions Win.”

25 “Improves South Side Park,” Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1901: 6.