August 27, 1938: Monte Pearson tosses Yankee Stadium’s first no-hitter

Between April 1923 and August 1938, there were 13 no-hitters in the major leagues. None were at Yankee Stadium.

Although the Yankees had their share of Hall of Famers on the mound, Yankee Stadium was known as a hitters’ park, with pinstriped sluggers taking the home-run crown in 12 of the park’s first 15 years of existence.1 So it seemed almost on-brand that the first no-hitter in the House That Ruth Built took a decade and a half to happen.2

And it came as the exclamation point on a particularly auspicious stretch of play for both the Yankees and the pitcher who threw it, Monte Pearson.

The 1938 Yankees, despite a 12-game lead en route to their third straight championship season, were exhausted. When Pearson took the mound for the second game of a Saturday twin bill, the team was playing its 10th game in five days – the string of doubleheaders resulting from four days of rain the third week of July.3

After an erratic first two months (3-5, 4.66 ERA), Pearson had won nine straight decisions since June 26 – but he still was walking more (89) than he was striking out (73), and the doubleheaders forced him to pitch on short rest. He threw a complete game on August 24.

That Saturday, August 27, he was facing his former mates, the team that had brought him to the majors, the Cleveland Indians, who were a distant third place in the American League. As a rookie in 1933,4 Pearson had led the AL with a 2.33 ERA. In 1934, he’d won 18 games. The Yankees had traded for him after an underwhelming 1935 season – and he flourished, going 19-7 in 1936, and 9-3 in an injury-plagued 1937. Now, a week from his 30th birthday, the Fresno, California, right-hander stood 12-5 with a 3.99 ERA.

The Yankees had won an 8-7 thriller in the opener on Joe DiMaggio’s walk-off two-run triple, his record-tying third three-bagger of the game. The Indians had scored four in the top of the ninth to lead by two, but the Yankees had plated three in the bottom off Johnny Allen, who had been traded for Pearson three years earlier.5

Pearson’s opponent in the nightcap, decidedly mediocre rookie Johnny Humphries, would lead the league in appearances that year, with 45, but was making just his fifth major-league start.

He didn’t take long to get into trouble, no thanks to two groundball errors by shortstop Lyn Lary (another Yankees castoff). After Pearson retired the side on three straight groundouts, the Yankees sent eight men to the plate and scored five runs, only two which were earned, but all of which were off the long ball. Tommy Henrich’s homer to deep right drove in Frank Crosetti (reached on a walk) and Red Rolfe (E-6), and Joe Gordon went deep to left to drive in DiMaggio (E-6).

Another two Yankees runs came in the third, on George Selkirk’s RBI single and Joe Glenn’s fly ball. Pearson had a 7-0 lead before he allowed a baserunner.

Back-to-back walks to lead off the fourth were all that stood between Pearson and perfection. But with Lary on second and Bruce Campbell on first, Pearson caught Jeff Heath looking. He then induced Earl Averill to ground out to the right side of the infield (advancing the runners), and struck out Hal Trosky.

Humphries was done after allowing another three runs in the fourth inning (Selkirk’s RBI single, Gordon’s two-run triple). The devastation: 10 runs (seven earned), nine hits, three walks, three strikeouts.

The Yankees tacked on three more off reliever Denny Galehouse when Gordon and Henrich each homered a second time – Gordon’s a two-run shot to left in the sixth, Henrich’s a solo shot to right in the seventh.

Pearson was perfect for the next five innings.

“Monte pitched with the flawless precision of an intricate piece of mechanism,” wrote John Drebinger in the New York Times. And, “with the Indians going down like reeds before a high gale,” the crowd of 40,959 “began to sit up and take notice.”6

“Control did it,” Pearson said after the game. “I could put the ball wherever I wanted it. I lost La[r]y and Campbell to the fifth [sic] because I was too confident. Until the seventh my mind wasn’t set on shooting for a no-hitter but when I got that far I began to think about it.”7

Pearson had come close before.8 With Cleveland on August 29, 1933, he lost a no-hitter against Washington in the ninth, allowing two runs on two hits. On May 10, 1937, with the Yankees, he allowed a single in the first inning, then held Chicago hitless for the next eight.9

So, after six innings, “I said to myself, ‘Gosh, will I be lucky enough to pull it off?’”10

Pearson’s superstitious teammates, on the other hand, including manager Joe McCarthy,11 gave him the cold shoulder.

“I’d sit in my seat all by myself,” Pearson said. “The rest of the fellows wouldn’t look at me. They talked about everything else, everything under the sun except a no-hitter. Then when we had to take the field, Joe McCarthy would say to me: ‘Go get ’em, boy.’

“And I went out to get ’em. Believe me, beginning with the seventh I really began to powder that ball through. I was more excited than any other time since I’ve been in baseball.”12

After a groundout to start the seventh, Indians manager Ossie Vitt tried a pinch-hitter. He subbed Roy Weatherly for Averill; pop fly to second. Trosky then fouled out to catcher Glenn. The eighth inning rolled along similarly – grounder, fly ball, pop to short.

“For every fast ball I threw I retaliated with a curve,” Pearson said. “I was faster Saturday than at any time during the past three years. I felt as though I could have pitched another nine innings. And between you and me the roar of the crowd the last two innings inspired me to that no-hitter. I felt as though I was in a world series game.”13

With Galehouse leading off the ninth, Vitt sent up another pinch-hitter, Julius “Moose” Solters. Pearson got him on three pitches. Then, a second pinch-hitter, for Lary, in Frankie Pytlak, who had caught Pearson in Cleveland.

“He’s a dangerous little hitter – Frankie,” Pearson said. “And I thought to myself: ‘Is this guy going to be cute and lay down a bunt?’ When I pitched to him I determined to make a dash over to the third base side to field any possible bunt. But he hit to Gordon. Joe made a dandy play.”14 Gordon scooped up a slow roller and fired to first baseman Lou Gehrig, just beating Pytlak to the bag.

With the Indians’ final hope in Campbell approaching the plate, DiMaggio kept fans in suspense by running in for a better pair of sunglasses. “He was the only player now on the field playing with the glaring light right in his eyes,” noted Drebinger.15

“Only one more to go,” Pearson narrated. “I thought to myself is this going to be like that Washington game. Campbell hit to left and I went: ‘Oh-oh, will Selkirk catch the ball?’ Selkirk did and I was in. All of a sudden I went limp and the crowd was all over me.”16

Indeed, after Selkirk caught the line drive, Drebinger wrote, “[T]he fans cut loose with an ear-splitting roar. They almost mobbed Monte before he had a chance to struggle to the dugout.”17

Pearson had pitched to two batters over the minimum, striking out seven. Of the 20 balls put into play, 15 never left the infield.

Henrich and Gordon were the hitting stars, driving in 10 of the Yankees’ 13 runs. Each had a pair of homers within their three hits; Gordon also had a triple and six RBIs, and Henrich drove in four.

Every Yankees position player drove in or scored at least one run. Gehrig (three runs scored), Selkirk (two RBIs, one run), and Rolfe (two runs) each had two hits. The only player who did not contribute to the Yankees’ offense was Pearson, who went 0-for-3.

Pearson’s no-hitter was the last of 10 straight “W” decisions for Pearson that year,18 and his only shutout. He finished 16-7 with a 3.97 ERA and 17 complete games. Two weeks later, his wife would give birth to their second child.

“Pearson’s no-hitter against the Indians was typical of the way the Yanks have of coming up with something downright shattering and applying it to the subject at the psychologically correct moment,” wrote Bob Considine of the International News Service. “Assuming that the Indians had a measure of fight left in them when they came to the stadium last Thursday, it was utterly gone when they left Saturday evening.19

The Yankees won five in the six-game series and sent Cleveland away 16 games back. They clinched the pennant on September 18.

The next no-hitter at Yankee Stadium came in 1946 from a visiting opponent – Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians.

Sources

In addition to the Sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA193808272.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1938/B08272NYA1938.htm

Notes

1 The only years a Yankee did not hold the AL home-run title between 1923 and 1937 were in 1932 and 1933, when it went to the A’s Jimmie Foxx, and in 1935, when Foxx tied with the Tigers’ Hank Greenberg. Babe Ruth finished second in ’32 and ’33, and Lou Gehrig was the runner-up in ’35.

2 The Yankees had two previous no-hitters, but they were both on the road: George Mogridge on April 24, 1917, at Fenway Park, and Sad Sam Jones on September 4, 1923 at Shibe Park.

3 The Yankees played 23 games – including 10 doubleheaders—between August 12 and August 27.

4 Pearson actually was brought up in 1932, but pitched a total of eight innings in eight appearances out of the Indians’ bullpen. Meaning in 1933 he was still technically a rookie.

5 The Yankees also got Steve Sundra in the Allen-for-Pearson trade.

6 John Drebinger, “No-hit, No-run Game Hurled by Pearson as Yanks Win Two,” New York Times, August 28, 1938: S1. The AL had not seen a no-hitter in more than a year, the most recent being the White Sox’ Bill Dietrich on June 1, 1937. The National League had seen two no-hitters in 1938 – Johnny Vander Meer’s pair earlier in the season.

7 Bill McCullough, “Classy Triumvirate: Work of Pearson, DiMaggio, and Henrich Featured Yankee Conquests During Past Week,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 29, 1938: 12.

8 Dick Walsh noted that Pearson had pitched “some no-hitters” in his semipro days in Oakland, California, but never professionally. “Dick Walsh’s Comment: It Must Have Been Case of ‘Try Again’ When Pearson Hurled No-Hitter,” Albany Times-Union, September 6, 1938: 13.

9 Pearson helped himself at the plate that day, as well, with three hits and two RBIs.

10 Max Case (International News Service), “Pearson Felt No-Hitter in 6th,” Washington Times, August 29, 1938: 17.

11 “I tried to make conversation with McCarthy but he didn’t give me a tumble. It’s a bad omen when you tell a pitcher he hasn’t allowed a hit,” Pearson said. McCullough.

12 Case.

13 McCullough. Pearson dominated in October, with a 4-0 record and a 1.01 ERA in 35⅔ innings. The comment foreshadowed his fourth and final World Series appearance in Game Two of the 1939 fall classic, when he pitched 7⅓ no-hit innings against Cincinnati, also at Yankee Stadium.

14 Case.

15 Drebinger.

16 Case.

17 Drebinger.

18 In his next start, on September 1, 1938, Pearson allowed six runs on 10 hits in a 6-3 loss to Detroit.

19 Bob Considine, “On the Line,” Albany Times-Union, August 29, 1938.