July 22, 1918: Bullet Joe Bush throws his fifth 1-0 shutout of season for surging Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox played only 126 games in 1918, a season abbreviated by World War I. The last games of the regular season were played on September 2. The World Series began three days later, and the Red Sox triumphed over the Chicago Cubs in six games, winning their fifth championship in the first 15 years of World Series play between the American and National Leagues.1

The 1918 Red Sox season was remarkable in that more than one-third of the team’s wins came in games in which the opposition never scored – a majors-best 26 of the team’s 75 wins were shutouts. Seven shutouts were by 25-year-old right-hander Bullet Joe Bush, ranking second only to Carl Mays’ eight.

Joe Bush had broken into the big leagues in 1912. He pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics through 1917, a tenure that included a World Series championship in 1913, a second AL pennant in 1914, and – after manager Connie Mack traded, sold, or released most of the team’s more talented players – three straight last-place finishes. He’d come to the Red Sox as part of a big six-player trade in December 1917, one sweetened by $60,000 in cash going to the Athletics.

Bush’s 1918 season had been going well, as had that of the team. Going into a July 22 doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park, the Red Sox were in first place, 5½ games ahead of the second-place Cleveland Indians.

It was a lead the team had built on a long July homestand. They were a half-game behind Cleveland when the homestand began on July 5. Twelve wins in 15 games over the Indians, the defending World Series champion Chicago White Sox, the St. Louis Browns, and the Tigers had boosted the Red Sox into first.

Boston’s pitchers had thrown shutouts in seven of those games and limited the opposition to a single run in three others. Sad Sam Jones and Bush both won 1-0 games against Cleveland in extra innings, and spot starter Lore “King” Bader blanked the Indians in a rain-shortened game. Mays had bested White Sox mainstay Ed Cicotte, 4-0, on July 11.

On July 17 Boston had swept a doubleheader with Bush and Babe Ruth shutting out the Browns, 7-0 and 4-0. Bush helped himself with four RBIs; Ruth drove in two runs in the nightcap.

Mays shut out the Tigers, 5-0, in the first game of a four-game series on July 19, and Jones limited Detroit to a single run in the next day’s game.

Sunday baseball was prohibited in Boston, so July 21 was an offday. The Red Sox and Tigers resumed play with a homestand-concluding doubleheader on Monday. The Tigers were 15½ games behind the Red Sox, in seventh place and only a half-game ahead of the last-place Athletics.

Bush started the opener. He entered with a record of 11-9 and a 2.09 ERA. Four of his wins had been by 1-0 scores: April 23 against the New York Yankees; May 28 in a one-hitter against the White Sox; June 10 in a two-hitter against the White Sox; and July 9 in 12 innings against Cleveland.

The two July 22 games – held on what was said to have been the hottest day of the year to date (91 degrees Fahrenheit) began at 1:45 P.M. and drew 10,592. Most knew the season would be curtailed due to the war, but there had as yet been no definitive end declared so the teams played on.

Pitching for Detroit was right-hander Bill James. He’d broken in with Cleveland back in 1911. His best year had been just the year before – 1917 – his third year with Detroit, with an ERA of 2.09 and a record of 13-10 for the fourth-place Tigers.2

Both Bush and James threw exceptionally well. Neither gave up a run for the first nine innings.

Detroit center fielder Ty Cobb singled with two outs in the first inning but was picked off first base by Bush.3

The closest the Tigers came to scoring was in the top of the seventh. First baseman Oscar Stanage singled. Right fielder Frank Walker hit into a force play, erasing Stanage, but Walker went first to third on a single by second baseman Jack Coffey. Catcher Tubby Spencer grounded to shortstop Everett Scott, who threw to the plate, catcher Sam Agnew applying the tag on a close play.

Bush allowed only three other hits in the game, one of them the single by Cobb. James held Babe Ruth hitless and allowed just six scattered hits.4 Hooper was 3-for-3.

Twice James struggled with his control. The first time was in the bottom of the fifth, when a Scott single and two bases on balls loaded the bases with Red Sox. There were two outs, however, and Tigers shortstop Donie Bush fielded Dave Shean’s grounder and made a “quick snap throw to first” to retire the side.5

James had struggled a bit more with control. He had walked five through the first nine, while Bush had walked two. In the bottom of the 10th, it was the sixth base on balls James doled out that scored the run that made the difference. And it was Bush who drew the walk, not swinging at any one of James’s first four pitches.

Next up was right fielder Harry Hooper. He “bounced a single” over the head of Stanage, Bush running from first to third on the play – and then scored when right fielder Walker “made a wild and nonsensical throw to Donie Bush. The ball went wild and was finally recovered by [left fielder Bobby] Veach after the Boston pitcher had scored on the error.”6 It was the only error charged to Detroit.

Burt Whitman of the Boston Herald asked rhetorically “Did Joe touch that plate? He did a clog dance on it.”7 Bush had beaten the White Sox, 1-0, on May 28 by driving in the game’s only run. This time, he had won it by scoring the sole tally.

In the nightcap, Carl Mays followed Bush’s shutout with one of his own, holding Hughie Jennings’ Tigers to four hits in a 3-0 win. It was Mays’ 17th win of the season. The Red Sox finished a very successful homestand, winning 14 of the 17 games played.

Bush lost six of his last seven decisions. The one win was a 2-0 shutout of the White Sox on August 16. Boston was shut out in three of those six losses and scored only one run for Bush in two of the other four. Bush finished the season with the best earned-run average among Red Sox starting pitchers (2.11), but a won-lost record of only 15-15.

Among Boston’s starters, Bush’s 26 complete games were second to Mays’ 30. Of the 126 games the Red Sox played in 1918, 105 were complete games.

The Red Sox also were World Series champions in 2018, exactly 100 years later. In that season, the pitching staff threw all of two complete games.8 Pitching strategies were dramatically different in 1918 than 100 years later.

Still, savvy use of relief pitching could also make a difference in 1918. In that year’s World Series, Boston’s starters finished five of the six games against the Cubs. Red Sox manager Ed Barrow went to his bullpen only once, in Game Four.

With Boston leading two games to one, Babe Ruth took a 3-2 lead to the top of the ninth. He put the first two runners on base, and Barrow called in Bush, who had lost Game Two to Lefty Tyler. A bunt groundout was followed by a 6-4-3 double play, putting Boston just one win from clinching.

Baseball’s record books retroactively credit Bush with the save, only the second in Red Sox World Series history.9 Two days later, on September 11, Boston closed out the World Series by winning Game Six.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Bullet Joe Bush, Trading Card Database.

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/BOS/BOS191807221.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1918/B07221BOS1918.htm

Notes

1 The Boston Americans won the first World Series ever played, in 1903. There was no Series played in 1904. The Red Sox had dominated the “teens,” winning in 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918. They did not lose a World Series until 1946, and famously did not win one for 86 years, from 1918 until 2004. The Cubs suffered a longer drought, winning back-to-back Series in 1907 and 1908 but then not again until 2016 – 108 years. They had been eliminated 14 times in postseason play during that long drought.

2 The Tigers’ James was not the Bill James who won 26 games for the 1914 “Miracle Braves.”

3 Edward F. Martin, “Double Shutout Is Handed to Tigers,” Boston Globe, July 23, 1918: 4.

4 Ruth was also hitless in the second game, 0-for-4.

5 Burt Whitman, “Hose Twice Daub Poor Tige with Kalsomine,” Boston Herald, July 23, 1918: 4. The three fifth-inning walks were noted in the Boston Globe account.

6 “James’ Hurling Wasted on Sox,” Detroit News, July 23, 1918: 14.

7 Whitman.

8 Neither was a shutout. There were no Red Sox shutouts in 2018. There was just one in 2019, by Chris Sale on June 5. There were none at all in 2020 or 2021.

9 Mays was retroactively credited with a save in Game One of the 1916 World Series, a 6-5 win over the Brooklyn Robins.