June 1, 1901: Boston’s Buck Freeman has first two-homer game in American League history

In the American League’s first major-league season of 1901, the pennant was won by the Chicago White Sox (83-53), who finished four games ahead of the second-place Boston Americans. The first to homer twice in one AL game was Boston first baseman Buck Freeman, on June 1 against the White Sox.

At the end of May 1901, Chicago (24-9) was in first place and Boston (11-14) in fourth. Visiting the White Sox at South Side Park, Boston had lost the first three games of a four-game series by scores of 8-3, 5-3, and 10-5.

Chicago manager Clark Griffith gave the start on June 1 to 22-year-old left-hander Zaza Harvey, just the third start of his career. Later in the season, Harvey also played outfield, also not that often. It was just his seventh game of the season.1 Harvey held the Bostons scoreless and hitless through the first three innings.

By then, Chicago had a 5-0 lead. Boston manager (and third baseman) Jimmy Collins started right-hander Fred Mitchell, who was four days from his 23rd birthday. It was the first start of Mitchell’s career. In his only other mound appearance, he had worked 2 1/3 innings in relief of Cy Young on April 27.2 

Chicago center fielder Billy Hoy led off the bottom of the first with a double just fair of third base. After Hoy advanced to third on an out, second baseman Sam Mertes walked and then stole second. Frank Isbell was hit by a pitch, loading the bases. One run scored when Boston shortstop Freddy Parent dropped the feed on an attempted 4-6-3 double play. Shortstop Frank Shugart lined one to left, which Tommy Dowd misjudged; it went for three bases and three runs. Herm McFarland (the Chicago left fielder) and Billy Sullivan (catcher) both singled, Sullivan’s hit driving in Shugart. Harvey hit into an inning-ending double play, but the White Sox had five runs.3 

Mitchell buckled down after the first inning and allowed only four hits in the remaining eight innings. Boston got two runs in the top of the fourth, when center fielder Chick Stahl was hit by a pitch and then, after Collins made an out, Freeman, reported the Boston Globe, “proceeded to lift the sphere over the right field fence.”4 It was the first hit off Harvey.

In the sixth inning, Boston exploded for six runs, taking an 8-5 lead. Center fielder Hoy misjudged a ball hit by Stahl. Collins chopped a hard grounder that bounced over third baseman Fred Hartman’s head. Stahl and Collins executed a double steal, putting them on second and third. Freeman hit a three-run homer, which, according to the Chicago Inter Ocean, was “belted … so far that credible witnesses, people who were here before the fire [which happened in 1871], say it is rolling yet.”5

Parent walked, and then White Sox middle infielders Shugart and Mertes committed back-to-back fielding errors. Harvey secured an out from the next batter – Mitchell, Parent scoring on the play. Left fielder Dowd then tripled to drive in two more runs. There were three White Sox errors in all during the frame.

When Jack Katoll took over in relief of Harvey in the top of the seventh, it was, per the Boston Herald, “much to the disgust and objection of the spectators, who realized that the south paw twirler had been pitching a good game and was in no wise to blame for the half dozen runs which the Bostons made in the sixth inning.”6 The Chicago Tribune agreed that “the fans resented it” when Harvey was removed.

Boston added two more runs in the seventh on a base on balls, a double by Collins, and a single by Parent.

Boston scored 10 runs on six hits, committing two errors. Chicago had eight hits, the five first-inning runs, and five errors.

Chicago’s leading home-run hitter in 1901 was Mertes, with five. He was 1-for-4 in this game.

Freeman had picked up the moniker Home Run Freeman in 1899 when he had reportedly homered 18 times in his first 25 games for the National League’s Washington Senators before cooling down.7 He went on to hit a league-high 25 homers that year. He played for Boston’s NL team in 1900 and homered in his first at-bat of the season, though he hit only five more all year.

On July 17, a month and a half after hitting two home runs in Chicago, Freeman became the first AL player with multiple two-homer games, when he hit two, driving in five runs, off right-hander Ed Scott in a 9-3 road win over Cleveland.

The hottest hitter in the league was Nap Lajoie of the Philadelphia Athletics, who hit .426 and drove in 125 runs, with 14 home runs – leading the new league in all three categories, a Triple Crown winner. Freeman hit .339 (ranking third) with 114 RBIs, second to Lajoie.

Two seasons later, in 1903, Freeman hit a major-league-leading 13 homers as Boston won its first American League pennant and went on to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first-ever World Series between the American and National Leagues. His 74 home runs from 1899 through 1904 were the most of any big-leaguer, easily topping runner-up Lajoie’s 46. His 610 RBIs during that period edged Honus Wagner’s 607 for most in the majors.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Buck Freeman, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Andrew Harner for suggesting this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA190106010.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1901/B06010CHA1901.htm

Notes

1 Harvey’s only prior major-league experience was two games with the National League’s Chicago Orphans in 1900. He had pitched four scoreless innings on one of them. In three at-bats, he struck out twice and was hitless for the season.

2 Young had been hammered for 10 runs – 8 of them earned – and lost the 12-6 game to the Orioles in Baltimore. Later in the 1901 season, Mitchell played in two games at second base.

3 “Boston Takes the Last,” Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1901: 17. See also “Curves with Wires,” Boston Morning Journal, June 2, 1901: 15.

4 “One Out of Four,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1901: 4.

5 “Buck and His Big Bat,” Chicago Inter Ocean, June 2, 1901: 18. For whatever reason, the Inter Ocean devoted almost its entire first paragraph to Freeman’s looks, starting the game account thus: “Buck Freeman of the Boston ball club, American, is not beautiful.  If you told a fiery French marquis that he looked like Buck Freeman, he would send his friend to you, and give you the choice of weapons.  If you hinted to a happy young parent that her son would look like Buck Freeman when he grew up, she would send for the police.” Right field at the Chicago ballpark was 300 feet from home plate. Philip J. Lowry, ed., Green Cathedrals, fifth edition (Phoenix: SABR, 2019), 77.

6 “Chicago Found Easy,” Boston Herald, June 2, 1901: 8.

7 An early use of the nickname is found in “On the Diamond,” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, April 15, 1900: 2. Reporting of his hitting 18 homers in 25 games may not be correct. It was found in a special dispatch “Chicago Found Easy” in the Boston Herald, June 2, 1901: 8. It was, however, said to have occurred “last year,” which would have made it 1900.