July 4, 1905: Rube Waddell pitches 20 innings, wins both games of doubleheader for Philadelphia A’s

July 4 was a long holiday for fans of the Boston Americans in 1905. Those who attended the second game of the day’s doubleheader between the Americans and Philadelphia Athletics saw something of a sequel to the perfect game Boston’s Cy Young had thrown 14 months earlier, on May 5, 1904.

That one, at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds, saw Young beat George “Rube” Waddell and the Athletics, 3-0. It was first perfect game thrown in the twentieth century.

While not a perfect game—as the teams combined for 27 hits and 10 errors in 20 innings—the Young-Waddell matchup on Independence Day 1905 was, the Boston Post wrote, “undoubtedly one of the best ever seen in Boston.”1 It also broke the record for the most innings played in a major-league game in Boston.

In 1905 Boston was coming off back-to-back pennants, beating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first “World’s Series” between the American and National Leagues in 1903 and repeating as AL champs in 1904.2 Entering the July 4 doubleheader, the Americans had just won four games in a row from the visiting Washington Senators but were still nine games out of first place.

The Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Naps were both tied for first, with the Athletics third, 2½ games back. Surging Philadelphia had won 10 of its last 14 games before the holiday doubleheader.

The scheduled called for a dual-admission doubleheader, with a 10:30 morning game and a 3:00 P.M. game. Philadelphia manager Connie Mack had Eddie Plank start the first game and Waddell the second. Boston manager-third baseman Jimmy Collins had Jesse Tannehill start game one and picked Young for game two.

The morning game was taken by Philadelphia, 5-2, in the time of 1:52. Though Boston shortstop Freddy Parent was 5-for-5, it remained tied 2-2 until the top of the eighth, when Philadelphia scored three unanswered runs, the first two scoring on an errant throw by Collins that first baseman Bob Unglaub, according to the Boston Globe, “was painfully slow in recovering.”3 W.S. Barnes Jr. of the Boston Journal wrote of the three errors committed by the Americans, “[T]here was a fatality in every mistake they made.”4 Philadelphia’s Lave Cross had three hits and scored thrice, disappointing most of the 8,797 onlookers.

Plank had given up the first Boston run in the opener, then illness forced him to the sidelines in the fourth inning. Reliever Andy Coakley gave up the Americans’ second run5 but pitched into the ninth, when, with one out and two runners on base, Mack brought Waddell in for the final two outs. Even though the decisive Athletics runs had scored with Coakley still in the game, the win was awarded to Waddell.6 The 28-year-old lefty’s record improved to 15-4. Tannehill, who had won his previous six decisions, dropped to 9-4. 

The second game started a little more than two hours later, before 12,666 afternoon patrons. This was the 10th meeting of the two hurlers and Cy was up, 6-3. Besides the perfect game, Young and Waddell had matched up three other times in 1904, Waddell winning the first on April 25, 2-0. Young won 7-6 on June 22 and 4-3 on June 30. July 4 was their first duel in 1905.7

After Young retired the Athletics in the top of the first, Boston right fielder Kip Selbach singled. He was sacrificed to second by Parent. Left fielder Jesse Burkett doubled, driving in Selbach, and center fielder Chick Stahl doubled, too, driving in Burkett. It was 2-0, Boston, but Waddell had many scoreless innings ahead of him.

The 38-year-old Young pitched well, too, scoreless ball through the first five innings. In the top of the sixth, left fielder Bris Lord reached on a scratch hit to Parent. One out later, slugging first baseman Harry Davis hit a ball so far over Stahl’s head in center field, in the spacious outfield of the Grounds, that he was able to round the bases for a two-run home run and the game was tied.8  

That day opportunity knocked plenty, but Boston left 17 runners on base and Philadelphia stranded 11. Remarkably, Cy Young pitched all 20 innings without walking even one batter. Waddell walked four but he proved good at squelching threats over his own 20-inning stint.

In the eighth inning, Parent led off with a triple for Boston, but got no farther. Waddell struck out left-handed hitters Burkett and Stahl. Unglaub flied out to deep right-center.  

In the 10th, Burkett singled and Stahl doubled to give Boston men on second and third with none out, but the Americans couldn’t get either one home. In the 11th, rookie umpire Tom Toss Kelly ruled that Athletics right fielder Socks Seybold had caught a fly ball, but Boston reporters thought the ball had struck the ground before he gloved it.9

Young retired the Athletics in order for three straight innings—the 16th, 17th, and 18th. Philadelphia snapped his streak by putting two runners on base with nobody out in the 19th but again went scoreless, stymied by a double play.

There were fielding plays aplenty that rated raves—and kept the crowd at the park and into the game, though it stretched on and on—but in the end it was poor defense that cost Boston the game.

In the top of the 20th, “the strain was apparently too much for the champions.”10 Second baseman Danny Murphy grounded to Collins at third, and Collins fumbled it. Shortstop John Knight was hit in the head and knocked unconscious by Young’s pitch. Monte Cross replaced Knight as a pinch-runner.

Catcher Ossee Schrecongost popped up behind Young and in front of second baseman Hobe Ferris. The Post thought Young had a play, but he didn’t get to it. Ferris fumbled the ball, too, and without a base hit, the Athletics had the bases loaded and nobody out.

Waddell hit the ball to Parent, who could have thrown home to get the lead runner but also failed to field the ball cleanly. He recovered and threw to third base to retire Cross, as Murphy scored. Young struck out Lord—for the third time—but Hoffman singled to center and scored “Schreck.”11 Philadelphia led, 4-2. The Boston Herald declared, “[H]ad it not been for errors behind ‘Cy’ the result might have been a draw.”12

In the bottom of the 20th, Stahl hit a fly ball, caught by Murphy. Unglaub doubled to left but remained on second as Collins lifted a high fly to shortstop. Ferris was due; he had been 0-for-4 in the first game and was 0-for-8 so far in this game. He swung the bat and made solid contact, but it was a ball hit hard “to deep left that Lord grabbed, and it was all over but the shouting.”13

Before this epic, Waddell had thrown a 17-inning, 4-2 win at the Huntington Avenue Grounds vs. Bill Dinneen on July 9, 1902. Young’s previous longest career game was way back on June 24, 1892, when he deadlocked lefty Ted Breitenstein 3-3 in St. Louis in 16 grueling frames.

Waddell himself reportedly said, “The fact that it was the 4th of July kept me going. I guess the shooting of revolvers and the fireworks and the yelling made me pitch better.”14 The Philadelphia North American averred, “[W]henever danger threatened he put on the speed and the Boston batsmen might just as well been trying to hit his curves with toothpicks.”15

The 20 innings were completed in 3:31. Fans were reportedly riveted, “suppers forgotten, engagements neglected, trains and boats missed, for very few would allow anything to interfere with their presence at the finish of such a game.”16

Barnes of the Boston Journal concluded, “Twenty-nine innings of nerve-wracking and muscle-tiring baseball in one day, and nothing to show for it, except honorable defeat, was the experience of the Boston Americans yesterday.”17

The closest Boston got to first place after the July 4 doubleheader was 6½ games in early August; they finished fourth. The Athletics won the pennant, two games ahead of the White Sox (and 16 ahead of Boston).18

In Young’s 16th year of major-league pitching, 1905 was the first in which he had a losing record (18-19), though his 1.82 ERA ranked third in the league. As Young had done in the American League’s inaugural season in 1901, Waddell won the 1905 pitching Triple Crown with a 27-10 record, a 1.48 ERA, and 280 strikeouts. It was his fourth of six straight K titles.

Young and Waddell ended 6-6-1 in personal matchups, with their finale, on September 9, 1907, being another classic for the ages. The battle, again at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds, saw Young (21-11) and Waddell (19-11) draw, 0-0, in 13 innings, each allowing six hits. 

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Dixie Tourangeau for a number of suggestions.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS190507042.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1905/B07042BOS1905.htm

Notes

1 Frederic P. O’Connell, “Battled for 20 Innings,” Boston Post, July 5, 1905: 1.

2 They held first place for all of May, June, and July, dropping down to second (and even briefly third) in August but righting the ship and finishing first by a game and a half. The New York Giants under John McGraw declined to take them on in postseason play so there was no Series.

3 “Great Battle of 20 Full Innings,” Boston Globe, July 5, 1905: 7.

4 W.S. Barnes Jr., “Boston Loses After Fighting for 20 Innings,” Boston Journal, July 5, 1905: 1.

5 “Champs Lose in 20 Innings to Athletics,” Boston Herald, July 5, 1905: 1.

6 Why would Waddell get the win? Scoring was done differently than today. In the inaugural edition of SABR’s The National Pastime, Frank J. Williams wrote, of the years 1905-19, “Under modern rules, this situation would be described as a save, but back then, it was a win.” Frank J. Williams, “All the Record Books Are Wrong,” The National Pastime: Premiere Edition (1982). https://sabr.org/journal/article/all-the-record-books-are-wrong/.

7 All told, the two future Hall of Famers faced each other 14 times. The first matchup came when they were both in the National League, on September 24, 1900. Cy Young was with the St. Louis Cardinals and Waddell with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Young won that one, 1-0, each pitcher allowing but four base hits. Five of their other 13 matchups ended in shutouts as well, the final time coming on September 9, 1907—a 0-0 tie game at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, called after 13 innings. In that game, neither pitcher issued even one base on balls. Each gave up six hits. The game was called due to darkness, in part due to a heavy fog.

8 Davis led the AL in home runs and RBIs in 1905, with 8 and 83. It was his second of four straight circuit-blast titles.

9 The best account of the game was in the Post. That writer admitted that the umpire was closer to the play, “but even umpires make mistakes and Kelley [sic] made one yesterday if ever a man did.” “Battled for 20 Innings,” 9. Kelly umped only seven more major-league games.

10 “Battled for 20 Innings.”

11 Schrecongost caught all 29 innings of the doubleheader. He was 2-for-12 as a batter, with two doubles in the second game.

12 “Champs Lose in 20 Innings to Athletics,” 9.

13 “Athletics Beat Boston in Game of 20 Innings,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 1905: 1, 12.

14 Dan O’Brien, “Marathon Men: Rube and Cy Go the Distance,” The National Pastime, Vol. 29, 2006.

15 Quoted in O’Brien, “Marathon Men: Rube and Cy Go the Distance.”

16 “Athletics Beat Boston in Game of 20 Innings.”

17 Barnes Jr., 1.

18 This time, the Giants agreed to play in the postseason, and the World Series resumed, becoming an annual tradition. The Giants took the 1905 World Series in five games as Christy Mathewson threw three shutouts while Waddell did not fire a single pitch.