June 13, 1885: Detroit’s George Wood hits for the cycle but White Stockings wallop Wolverines

The Chicago White Stockings built a dynasty in the first decade of major-league baseball. A charter member of the National League, they captured the pennant in 1876 and every season from 1880 through 1882. After a second-place finish in 1883, they dropped to fourth in 1884 (tied with the New Yorks). 

As the 1885 season got underway, Chicago was determined to show its winning ways again.1 The White Stockings won 18 of their first 24 games, all played on the road, capping the trip by sweeping four games from the Detroit Wolverines and outscoring the home team 28-12. 

Chicago’s next 28 games were played at home, at West Side Park. The homestand began with a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Maroons, giving Chicago an eight-game winning streak and a first-place tie with the New York Giants.2 Then Detroit came to the Windy City for four more games, beginning on June 12. At the bottom end of the NL standings were the Wolverines.

Detroit had won only five of its first 28 games. In fact, after sweeping the Buffalo Bisons in the first three games of the season, Detroit had lost 23 of 25 games as it came to Chicago to play the White Stockings. 

Both teams stayed the course in the series opener. Chicago’s 6-4 win made it nine in a row and dropped Detroit even further off the pace. A crowd of 2,000 spectators turned out to the ballpark to witness the second game of the series, played on June 13. Only a week before did the NL revoke an offseason ruling that required pitchers “to keep both feet on the ground while making their delivery.”3 The absurdity of this requirement caused confusion for umpires and injuries to pitchers. Therefore, the fans were treated to a lot of runs, a lot of hits, and a lot of errors. 

The White Stockings had the NL’s best offense, leading in most categories, including team OPS (.705), runs scored (834), and home runs (54 – almost three times the league average). Although the team batting average was .264, Chicago had two everyday hitters batting over .300: team captain Cap Anson (who batted .310 for the season) and George Gore (.313).

They also had John Clarkson on the mound. In 1885 the future Hall of Famer led the league in most pitching categories: games (70), starts (70), complete games (68), shutouts (10), strikeouts (308), and wins (53).4 Clarkson had started 19 of his team’s first 29 games, winning 15 of them, and the 23-year-old right-hander got the mound duties for this game, too.

The Wolverines’ offense was led by George Wood, Ned Hanlon, and Sam Thompson. Wood, a native Canadian, was in his fifth season with Detroit.5 He was primarily an outfielder (left field), but in 1885, he played 13 games as an infielder and even was called on to pitch as a reliever once.

In this second game against Chicago, manager Charlie Morton gave every other regular starter (including Hanlon and Thompson) a day off, which meant that Wood needed to step up. According to the Detroit Free Press, Wood did just that, in that he “had a bad attack of batting,”6 collecting four hits in five at-bats.

Pretzels Getzien did the twirling for the visitors. The 21-year-old right-hander was in just his second season in the majors. Getzien struggled in 1884 and 1885, but by 1886 he became one of the National League’s top pitchers. In 1887 he led the Wolverines to a championship. He had gained his nickname because of his “puzzling twisters,”7 Specifically, batters described “the course of the ball from his hand to their bats as a ‘pretzel curve.’”8 In June 1885, however, Getzien had not yet perfected his delivery.

The home team batted first, and both sides were retired without scoring in the first inning. Chicago’s Ed Williamson led off the top of the second with a walk, and successive one-out singles by Clarkson and Sy Sutcliffe brought Williamson home with the game’s first run. Detroit matched the tally in the bottom of the inning with hits by Frank Ringo and Getzien.

In the third, George Gore drew a base on balls and moved into scoring position on a single by Kelly. Fred Pfeffer’s RBI single gave Chicago the lead again. Williamson plated Kelly with a single, and Clarkson’s second hit of the game scored both Pfeffer and Williamson.

In Detroit’s half, Wood clobbered a solo home run. As reported in the Chicago Tribune, he “sent the ball to the east fence. It showed every inclination to go further but the fence was in the way.”9 Chicago still led, 5-2.

The White Stockings put the game out of reach in the fourth. Gore doubled and scored on Kelly’s single. Billy Sunday reached on an error and Pfeffer’s groundout put two runners in scoring position. Williamson’s single brought Kelly and Sunday home, and then Tom Burns hit a two-run homer. Chicago now had a 10-2 advantage.

Getzien’s batterymate, Ringo, was charged with five passed balls through the first four innings, so when the fifth started, Ringo was banished to play right field, and Jerry Dorgan became the new Wolverines backstop.

Clarkson was in control through five innings. In the top of the sixth, Getzien walked Williamson for the second time, and Burns hit his second homer of the game, making the score 12-2. When Detroit took its turn at bat, “Clarkson let down his speed,”10 and the Wolverines scored two runs of their own, all with two outs. Milt Scott, Ringo, and Joe Quest loaded the bases on singles. Left fielder Burns made an error, allowing Scott to score, and a wild pitch by Clarkson allowed Ringo to cross the plate.

In the seventh, Wood drove the ball deep into the outfield. He made it safely to third, with a triple, but when the ball came to Sutcliffe at the plate, the catcher “failed to hold the ball thrown [to] him,”11 and Wood came home with a run. Stump Wiedman reached on an error by Chicago’s second baseman Pfeffer and scored when Dorgan doubled. Marr Phillips followed with a single, and Dorgan scored the third run of the inning. Detroit had trimmed the Chicago lead to five runs.

By then, however, “the home nine had obtained too great a lead to be overcome,”12 and in the eighth, the White Stockings added to their advantage. Burns walked and moved into scoring position on Clarkson’s third hit of the game. Sutcliffe singled and Burns scored. Abner Dalrymple singled, and on the play both Clarkson and Sutcliffe scored. Another pitch by Getzien got past Dorgan for a passed ball, and Dalrymple scored, making it 16-7. Chicago added a final run in the ninth on multiple Wolverine errors.

Detroit’s last at-bat resulted in a pair of runs. This time, the Chicago fielders couldn’t make the clean plays. Wiedman reached and scored on errors. Two outs later, Scott doubled but kept running when the inept fielding allowed him to score.

A total of 26 runs were scored in the game. The Chicago Inter Ocean reported that the White Stockings’ “Gore, Kelly, Pfeffer, Williamson and Burns kept up their reputation as base-runners by stealing eight bases.”13 The two teams combined for 30 hits, with Chicago getting 17 to go with their 17 runs. Every Chicago player had at least one hit and scored at least one run. Clarkson led his team with his three safeties.

For Detroit, Wood collected 10 total bases with his four hits. Newspaper accounts described only his triple and home run, although all box scores show that Wood also hit a single and double in the game, giving him a cycle.

It made him just the seventh major-leaguer to hit for the cycle and the first Detroit player to accomplish that deed.14 His feat also marked the first time that a player had hit for the cycle and his team had lost the game.15

The “multiplicity of errors”16 led to many of the runs on both sides. In addition, Getzien yielded four bases on balls, threw two wild pitches, and the pair of Detroit catchers allowed six passed balls.

Chicago kept up its winning ways, earning victories in all four games of the series against Detroit. The White Stockings then won six more (against Buffalo and the Philadelphia Phillies). They had won 18 games in a row, although they had gained only a few games in the standings over the equally red-hot Giants. As September ended, Chicago, with its 85-21 record, was four games better than New York, and the White Stockings went on to capture the 1885 pennant.17 The NL champs then played the American Association’s St. Louis Browns in a postseason series that would “determine the best team in the world.”18 The teams played a seven-game series, each winning three, with one tie.

Detroit struggled in June but then won 15 of 24 games in July. The Wolverines’ losing ways returned in August, when they lost 13 of 16 games. They finished the 1885 campaign in sixth place, a whopping 44 games behind the White Stockings.19

Author’s Note

 In the span of five days in mid-June 1885, three players hit for the cycle, the only time so many cycles occurred in so few games in the history of the major leagues. The first was Dave Orr (New York Metropolitans, American Association), who did so on June 12 against the St. Louis Brown Stockings. Wood cycled the very next day, and then on June 16, Henry Larkin (Philadelphia Athletics, American Association) hit for a reverse natural cycle against the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. On September 28, Wood’s teammate, Mox McQuery, became the fourth player in 1885 to collect a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game, as he “hit for the whole diamond” against the Providence Grays.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Stew Thornley and copy-edited by Len Levin.

 Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, MLB.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org. Box scores and play-by-play are not available from either Retrosheet or Baseball-Reference.

Notes

1 In 1884, the National League’s Providence Grays and the American Association’s New York Metropolitans played a three-game series at the end of the season, but it “had not been sanctioned by their leagues and, therefore, was not considered a championship series by either league.” This was not to be the case in 1885. Any postseason series would be sanctioned. Paul E. Doutrich, “Champions, Tantrums and Bad Umps: The 1885 ‘World Series,’” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 46, No. 2 (2017), https://sabr.org/journal/article/champions-tantrums-and-bad-umps-the-1885-world-series/.

2 Both the White Stockings and Giants were 22-6 at close of play on June 11.

3 Mark Pestana, “1884 Winter Meetings: Collapse of the Union, Return of the Prodigals,” Base Ball’s 19th Century “Winter” Meetings: 1857-1900 (Phoenix: SABR, 2018), 221-231, https://sabr.org/journal/article/1884-winter-meetings-collapse-of-the-union-return-of-the-prodigals/.

4 Clarkson’s 53 wins in 1885 rank second-best in major-league history. (Providence’s Old Hoss Radbourn won 60 games in 1884.)

5 When the Wolverines folded at the end of the 1885 season, Wood was “granted to [the] league,” along with Dan Casey, Deacon McGuire, McQuery, and Wiedman. He was then obtained by the Philadelphia Phillies, and he played for Philadelphia from 1886 to 1889.

6 “Fair Balls,” Detroit Free Press, June 14, 1885: 7.

7 “Notes and Comments: Chas. H. Getzien,” Sporting Life, November 2, 1887: 3.

8 “Notes and Comments: Chas. H. Getzien.” 

9 “Sporting,” Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1885: 10.

10 “National League,” Detroit Free Press, June 14, 1885: 7.

11 “Sporting.”

12 “National League.”

13 “League Contests,” Chicago Inter Ocean, June 14, 1885: 3.

14 Wood’s cycle was just the second to take place in a National League game, following Buffalo’s Jim O’Rourke, who hit for the cycle on June 16, 1884, against the White Stockings.

15 As of the end of the 2022 season, major leaguers have hit for the cycle 339 times. In 278 of those games, the cyclist’s team won the game (82.0%); in 59 games, the cyclist’s team lost the game (17.4%). There have been two tie games in which a batter has hit for the cycle (0.6%).

16 “Sporting.”

17 See Bob Tiemann, SABR Games Project, “September 29-October 3, 1885: White Stockings cap a pennant chase.” Chicago also won the pennant in 1886, giving it six championships in the National League’s first 11 seasons.

18 Doutrich.

19 On September 16, 1885, “a deal was struck whereby Detroit’s owners paid $7,000 for a controlling share” in the Buffalo Bisons, who were leaving the league. The Wolverines thus snagged Buffalo’s star players, consisting of Hardy Richardson, Jack Rowe, and future Hall of Famers Dan Brouthers and Deacon White. See Mark Pestana, “1885 Winter Meetings: A Temporary Stability,” Base Ball’s 19th Century “Winter” Meetings: 1857-1900, 237-246, https://sabr.org/journal/article/1885-winter-meetings-a-temporary-stability/. Detroit was in the 1886 pennant race, finishing in third place but only 2½ games behind the White Stockings.