August 26, 1910: Jack Coombs fans 14 in four-hit shutout for A’s

Jack Coombs was in the midst of one of the most spectacular seasons in baseball history as he took the mound against the lowly St. Louis Browns. After posting a pedestrian 35-35 record in his first four seasons, the 27-year-old right-hander for the Philadelphia A’s was leading the majors with 22 wins (against just seven loses) and eight shutouts, one of which was a monumental 16-inning, three-hit, scoreless tie with 18 strikeouts against the Chicago White Sox on August 4. “Jawn,” as Philadelphia newspapers like to call him, had also completed 26 of 28 starts and was coming off consecutive 10-inning complete-game victories, yielding just one run in each, in a span of six days.

Coombs’ emergence as the circuit’s best hurler had propelled skipper (and owner) Connie Mack’s squad to the best record (79-35) in the major leagues. With a 12-game lead over the second-place Boston Red Sox, it was a forgone conclusion that the Athletics would capture their first pennant since 1905 and the second in franchise history as a charter member of the AL. The Brownies, on the other hand, had baseball’s worst record (35-77) and had been riding a seven-game losing streak before beating the A’s in the first game of the three-game set the day before by exploding for 15 hits in a 9-6 thrashing, the most runs the A’s had surrendered in more than two months. First-year skipper Jack O’Connor sent 29-year-old right-hander Barney Pelty to the mound. In his eighth season, all with the Browns, Pelty was 4-9 with an 82-91 career slate.

The Friday afternoon game at Shibe Park, the A’s state-of-the-art steel-and-concrete ballpark (baseball’s first), which had opened to inaugurate the 1909 season, was played under what sportswriter Jim Nasium of the Philadelphia Inquirer described as “lowering skies” and “leaden atmosphere” with temperatures in the 70s. He further noted that such conditions created a “proper setting to render pitchers with plenty of smoke.”1

After two scoreless frames, the Browns mounted the first scoring chance when Bobby Wallace led off the third by drawing Coombs’ first and only free pass of the game, stole second, and moved to third when catcher Jack Lapp’s throw sailed into the outfield. Flashing his speed and knee-buckling curveball, once described as dropping several feet at the plate without moving its lateral direction,2 Coombs fanned Jim Stephens and Pelty and then dispatched Frank Truesdale on an infield grounder to end the frame. The Browns reached as far as second on only one other occasion, in the sixth when Stephens led off with a single and moved up a station on Pelty’s sacrifice, but Coombs again reared back and punched out the next two batters to quash the scoring chance. Coombs, opined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “fooled O’Connors’ pets in a wholesale manner.”3

The contest unfolded as a pitchers’ duel with Pelty matching zeroes with Coombs through the first five frames while the twirlers yielded only four total hits (three off Pelty). The double shutout ended in the sixth when the A’s Frank “Home Run” Baker led off with a triple to left-center and then sprinted home when center fielder Danny Hoffman’s return throw sailed over Wallace’s head at short. Ben Houser followed with single and it looked as though Pelty might be on the ropes when Lapps laced a two-out single, but Coombs’ popup to right ended the threat.

The A’s, who eventually led the AL in 1910 with a team batting average of .266 and ranked second with 4.3 runs per game (just behind the Detroit Tigers’ 4.4), put on an exhibition of Deadball Era offensive tactics in the seventh. Bris Lord led off with a double and moved up a station when Rube Oldring, who entered the game leading the club with a .325 batting average, beat out a bunt to third. Eddie Collins’s single brought Lord home and the floodgates were open. After Baker’s sacrifice moved both runners into scoring position, Oldring aggressively ran home on Houser’s grounder to second and scored standing up, according to the Inquirer. Danny Murphy’s sacrifice fly driving in Collins accounted for the third and final run of the frame to make it 4-0.

The A’s tacked on two more runs in the eighth. With Lord on second via a fielder’s choice and a stolen base, Collins hit a two-out single to Hoffman, whose bad day in center field continued. According to Jim Nasium, the former A’s flychaser, who had led the AL with 46 stolen bases for the pennant-winning team in 1905, “let [the ball] ooze through,” enabling Lord to score and Collins to reach third.4 Baker’s single to right scored Collins to make it 6-0.

Through eight innings, Coombs had yielded just three hits and had fanned 13, including two in five different innings, and had registered at least one punchout in every frame thus far. George Stone eked out a seeing-eye infield single with one out, but Coombs retired Pat Newnam on a fly to right fielder Danny Murphy, who registered the only two outfield putouts for the A’s the entire game. Colby Jack put an emphatic exclamation point on his masterpiece by registering his 14th strikeout of the afternoon, whiffing Art Griggs to end the game in exactly two hours. “Coombs was the whole show,” gushed the St. Louis Star.5

Coombs continued to befuddle hitters for the rest of the season with his heater and curveball, which F.C. Lane wrote in Baseball Magazine said “actually shortened [his arm] by the stiffening of the cords at the elbow.”6 Coombs won his next six starts, giving him nine consecutive victories, and ultimately won 10 straight decisions, during which he pitched four shutouts and logged 53 consecutive scoreless innings. He finished the season by leading the big leagues with 31 wins (9 losses) and 13 shutouts, and ranking second in ERA (1.30), just behind Big Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox. He capped off the campaign by tossing three complete-game victories in the World Series against the Chicago Cubs, helping the Mackmen to their first title.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

NOTES

1 Jim Nasium, “In Beating Browns Coombs Sets Record,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 27, 1910: 10.

2 Malachi Kittredge in the National Game, quoted from Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (New York: Fireside, 2004), 171.

3 “Coombs Pitches Pennant Ball Against O’Connorites,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 27, 1910: 6.

4 Jim Nasium.

5 J. Coombs Fans Fourteen Browns,” St. Louis Star, August 27, 1910: 10.

6 F.C. Lane, Baseball Magazine, November 1913, quoted from Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/ James Guide to Pitchers (New York: Fireside, 2004), 171.