August 21, 1955: A’s prospect Bob Davis treats Vermont fans to minor-league no-hitter

Most fans dream of seeing a no-hitter in person, but decades can pass without an opportunity close to home. For instance, Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field hosted National League baseball from 1909 to 1970 – more than 4,700 games – without a no-no.1 Fans at Boston’s hitter-friendly Fenway Park could have attended Red Sox games from September 1965 to April 2002 without seeing a no-hitter.2

Other fans, in other places, are more fortunate.

Between 1907 and 1983, the city of Burlington, Vermont, hosted affiliated pro baseball for exactly one season – 1955, when the Burlington A’s of the Class C (Québec) Provincial League came to town. The A’s played 129 games, giving Burlington fans only about 65 opportunities to see the team in person.3 Still, fans who went to the city’s Centennial Field on August 21 got to cross a no-hitter off their list of dreams, as Burlington righty Bob Davis, in his first professional season, threw a seven-inning whitewash of the Trois-Rivières Phillies in the first game of a Sunday doubleheader.

Burlington, a Kansas City Athletics affiliate, and Trois-Rivières, a Philadelphia Phillies farm team, entered the day fighting it out for third place in their six-team loop. Manager Vince Plumbo’s A’s sat in third with a 50-53 record, while Al Barillari’s Phillies stood in fourth at 50-57.4 Both teams were far behind the first-place Saint-Jean Canadiens, a Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate with a record of 77-35, but both were comfortably in line for playoff spots. The top four teams in the Provincial League reached the playoffs, and Burlington and Trois-Rivières were well ahead of fifth-place Sherbrooke (42-67) as the season wound down.5

Class C was the second-lowest of six minor-league designations in 1955.6 Only one member of the Trois-Rivières team, pitcher Ray Semproch, climbed all the way to the major leagues, and he didn’t play on August 21. The starting pitching assignment for the first game of the doubleheader went to 22-year-old righty Fred Gottlieb, formerly of Baylor University. Gottlieb went 2-4 with a 5.02 ERA in 14 games, including 5 starts, in his only recorded professional season.

Four members of the Burlington team had either previously reached the majors or would get there, and the 800 fans in attendance got to see all four.

Center fielder Bill Kern was on his way up at age 22; he reached the Kansas City A’s for eight games in 1962. Left fielder Bernell “Chick” Longest and shortstop Ralph LaPointe were veterans. Longest, age 37, had played parts of three seasons (1946-1948) in the Negro American League, one of the pre-integration Black leagues that was subsequently classified as a major league. LaPointe, age 33, had played parts of two seasons (1947-48) with the Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals. A well-loved local figure, he grew up in nearby Winooski, attended the University of Vermont, and had come back to the area to coach the university’s baseball team. He lent the fledgling Burlington team a local-hero gate attraction, as well as a steady veteran presence.7

Starting pitcher Davis was also major-league-bound, reaching Kansas City for 29 games in 1958 and 1960. As of August 1955, he was a 21-year-old first-year player out of Yale University, where he’d once pitched a no-hitter against Cornell University.8 He’d pitched five games for the A’s Class A farm team in Savannah, Georgia, before being optioned to Burlington. Entering the doubleheader, Davis had made only one previous start with Burlington: On August 14, he’d dropped a 3-2 decision to Trois-Rivières.9

After Davis pitched scoreless ball in the top of the first, Kern led off the bottom half with a walk. Gottlieb handed a second free pass to second baseman Jackie Brathwaite,10 then surrendered a single that gave Burlington a quick 1-0 lead.11

Gottlieb got a better handle on his control in the second – after walking three batters in the first, he is not listed as issuing any further walks – but the Burlington batters began to take his measure. LaPointe singled and Brathwaite drove him in with a long triple to center field.12 Longest followed with another single, scoring Brathwaite for a 3-0 Burlington lead.

Burlington rookie right fielder Hugo Guidotti,13 a lefty swinger and former Yale teammate of Davis, had won the previous night’s game with a walk-off two-run ninth-inning home run. He duplicated those heroics in the third, hitting a solo homer to more or less the same spot in right field.14 That gave the A’s a 4-0 advantage and wrapped up the game’s scoring. Gottlieb was removed in favor of righty Marco Mainini, a fourth-year player who held the A’s without a hit the rest of the way.15

One writer described Davis as “a fast-baller with a curve that crackles,” and while Gottlieb was struggling, Davis was dominating.16 “Davis était réellement en grande forme,” the Trois-Rivières newspaper Le Nouvelliste summarized: “Davis was really in great form.”17 He walked only two, hit a batter, and struck out 10.

According to game accounts, only two fielding plays stood out. One was a “tremendous running catch” by center fielder Kern in an unspecified inning.18 The other play took place in the seventh and final frame, when Trois-Rivières first baseman Rudy Paparella laced a groundball over second base. Brathwaite fielded it and threw high to Morris at first base. The scoreboard initially indicated a hit, then changed to an error, saving Davis’s no-hitter.19

Plumbo, who also served as Burlington’s starting catcher, said that Davis got stronger as the game went on, and that Davis was aware of the no-no but didn’t let the pressure affect him.20 Davis wrapped up the game in 1 hour and 30 minutes, completing the Provincial League’s third no-hitter of 1955.21 Trois-Rivières bounced back to take the second game, 7-4.

Burlington closed the season in third place with a 65-64 record, while Trois-Rivières finished fourth at 62-68. The A’s upset first-place Saint-Jean in the first round of the playoffs while Trois-Rivières fell to the Québec Braves. Québec beat Burlington in the championship series, four games to one. Davis pitched a complete-game win against Saint-Jean in the fourth game of their series, but lost to Québec in the third game of the championship round.22

Burlington had intended to return to the Provincial League in 1956, but other cities in the loop faced financial difficulties. On April 16, 1956, league President George MacDonald announced that the Provincial League would not operate that season following the loss of two of its remaining five teams.23

Burlington fans had to wait almost 30 years for their next affiliated minor-league team – and their next chance to watch a professional no-hitter. Vermont’s largest city returned to the affiliated minors in 1984, when the Vermont Reds of the Double-A Eastern League set up shop. On June 20, 1985, Curt Heidenreich of the Reds pitched the first professional no-hitter in Burlington since Davis’s no-no, throwing a rain-shortened 4½-inning no-hitter against the Pittsfield (Massachusetts) Cubs at Centennial Field.24 It was 29 years, 9 months, and 30 days after Davis made Vermont baseball history on the same mound.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks SABR member and Games Project chair John Fredland for research assistance.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the August 22, 1955, editions of the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press and Le Nouvelliste (Trois- Rivières, Québec) published box scores.

Photo of 1961 Topps card #246 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Curt Smith, “Forbes Field,” SABR Biography Project, accessed September 2023. Nick Maddox of the Pirates threw a no-hitter at the city’s old Exposition Park on September 20, 1907. The next American or National League no-no in Pittsburgh was thrown by the St. Louis Cardinals’ Bob Gibson at Three Rivers Stadium on August 14, 1971. Fans of other leagues had better luck. Claude Hendrix of the Federal League’s Chicago Whales threw a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Rebels at Exposition Park on May 15, 1915, and in the Negro Leagues, Satchel Paige of the Pittsburgh Crawfords threw no-hitters at the city’s Greenlee Field in 1932 and 1934.

2 Fenway hosted a college no-hitter on April 22, 1997, when Scott Barnsby of the University of Massachusetts pitched one against Northeastern University in the finals of a regional tournament called the Baseball Beanpot. Attendance for the game was given at 424, so it seems unlikely that many Red Sox fans were lucky or prescient enough to be on hand.

3 The team closed the season 65-64. Professional teams are typically scheduled for an equal number of home and away games. The author did not try to determine exactly how many home games the Burlington team played, but assumes it was either 64 or 65.

4 Plumbo and Barillari were both lifetime minor leaguers. Plumbo, primarily a catcher, played parts of 14 minor-league seasons, topping out at Triple A, and managed for four seasons. Barillari played parts of 12 seasons as an outfielder, pitcher, and third baseman, also peaking at Triple A, and managed for part or all of 11 seasons.

5 Provincial League standings based on those published in the Barre (Vermont) Daily Times, August 22, 1955: 2. Note that the standings in the Daily Times reflect the games of August 21; the standings in this story have been adjusted to remove the game results of August 21 and show where the teams stood entering the day.

6 From highest to lowest, the minor-league levels were Triple A, Double A, Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class D.

7 The clubhouse and locker room facilities at Centennial Field were dedicated in LaPointe’s memory following his death from cancer in 1967. Dominick DeNaro, “Ralph LaPointe,” SABR Biography Project, accessed February 2025.

8 “Red Batsmen Draw Blank Against Eli,” Ithaca (New York) Journal, April 27, 1953: 13. Davis told a reporter that his no-no against Cornell was the first one he’d thrown at any level.

9 Walt Hickey, “Bob Davis Pitches No-Hitter Here for Athletics,” Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, August 22, 1955: 12; “Athletics Gird for 2 Games on Home Field,” Burlington Daily News, August 15, 1955: 6.

10 A 25-year-old Panamanian, Brathwaite is listed as Alonso Brathwaite in Baseball-Reference, but was referred to as Jackie or Jack Brathwaite by the two Burlington newspapers, the Free Press and the Daily News. He played eight seasons in the US minor leagues. Hickey, “Bob Davis Pitches No-Hitter Here for Athletics;” John DeVitry, “Yale U. Grad in No-Hitter Vs. Phils,” Burlington Daily News, August 22, 1955: 6.

11 Published sources disagree on who hit the run-scoring single. DeVitry, in the Burlington Daily News, credited first baseman Ed Morris. The box scores in the Burlington Free Press and the Trois-Rivières paper, Le Nouvelliste, do not credit Morris with an RBI. Instead, they credit third baseman Michael Walsh with an RBI that is not accounted for in any other inning. Hickey’s game story in the Burlington Free Press did not name the batter who drove in the first-inning run, saying only that an infield single produced the tally.

12 DeVitry, “Yale U. Grad in No-Hitter Vs. Phils.”

13 After his minor-league career, Guidotti returned to his hometown of Hudson, Massachusetts, in the far western suburbs of Boston, where he taught chemistry and physics and coached football, baseball, and basketball. In 2022, five years after Guidotti’s death, the baseball field at Hudson High School was renamed Guidotti Field in his honor. Dakota Antelman, “Hudson Dedicates HHS Baseball Field to Hugo Guidotti Jr.,” Westborough (Massachusetts) Community Advocate, May 14, 2022, https://www.communityadvocate.com/2022/05/14/hudson-dedicates-hhs-baseball-field-to-hugo-guidotti-jr/.

14 Hickey, “Bob Davis Pitches No-Hitter Here for Athletics.”

15 According to the box scores cited above. Oddly, DeVitry in the Burlington Daily News did not note any pitching change for Trois-Rivières, writing that Gottlieb “chucked a good game” after the third inning.

16 DeVitry, “Yale U. Grad in No-Hitter Vs. Phils.”

17 “Les Phillies Victimes d’Une Partie Sans Point Ni Coup Sûr” (“Phillies Victims of No-Hitter”), Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières, Québec), August 22, 1955: 15, available at https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3250888?docsearchtext=Nouvelliste%201955. Accessed February 2025. This story, credited to “Spécial,” briefly summarizes all three of the Phillies’ games in Burlington on August 20 and 21, and it seems possible that one or the other of the Burlington papers may have provided it. (As previously mentioned, the box score in Le Nouvelliste aligns with the one in the Burlington Free Press.)

18 Hickey, “Bob Davis Pitches No-Hitter Here for Athletics.”

19 DeVitry, “Yale U. Grad in No-Hitter Vs. Phils.” According to the box score, this was Burlington’s second error of the game; right fielder Guidotti committed one at an unspecified point.

20 “Plumbo: ‘Davis Showed Me the Fastest Fastball,’” Burlington Daily News, August 23, 1955: 6.

21 Walt Hickey, “Rookie from Yale Pitches Mound Gem for Burlington,” The Sporting News, August 31, 1955: 35. The earlier no-hitters were thrown by Ramon Salgado of Saint-Jean and Bob Theiss of Québec.

22 Walt Hickey, “Athletics Eliminate St. John from PL Playoffs,” Burlington Free Press, September 12, 1955: 12; Walt Hickey, “Braves Defeat Athletics, Lead in Series, 2 to 1,” Burlington Free Press, September 17, 1955: 14.

23 Walt Hickey, “Provincial League’s Status Hangs in Air After Conflicting Reports,” Burlington Free Press, April 17, 1956: 12.

24 Kevin Iole, “Reds Triumph on 5-Inning No-Hitter,” Burlington Free Press, June 21, 1985: 1C. The attendance of Heidenreich’s game was listed in the box score as not available. Vermont’s lineup that day included future Hall of Famer Barry Larkin and future National League Rookie of the Year Chris Sabo.