June 16, 1884: Jim O’Rourke hits for the cycle as Bisons rout Chicago

On June 16, 1884, the Chicago White Stockings were in Buffalo to play the Bisons in the first of a two-game National League series. Buffalo had won five in a row, leveling its record at 17-17. The White Stockings had started their road trip by splitting a four-game series with the Detroit Wolverines, and at 16-18 they were one game behind the Bisons. Injuries contributed to the slow start, prompting the Chicago Tribune to report, “A nine composed about one-third of ‘has-been’ material will not win the championship this year.”1

Approximately 1,000 people were “at the picnic in Olympic Park,” and they saw a convincing win for the home team, with Hall of Fame-bound Bisons left fielder, leadoff hitter, and manager Jim O’Rourke leading the charge with four hits – a single, double, triple, and home run.2

The 33-year-old O’Rourke had begun his major-league career with the National Association’s Middletown Mansfields in 1872 and then spent six seasons in Boston, first with the NA’s Red Stockings and then with the Boston Nationals (a forerunner to the Braves in the National League). O’Rourke’s Boston teams won five pennants in that six-season span. O’Rourke led the NL three times in home runs while with Boston teams. On April 22, 1876, O’Rourke played in the first-ever NL game and was credited with the first hit (a single) in league history.3

He signed with Providence, which won the 1879 pennant, and returned to Boston for 1880. Buffalo persuaded O’Rourke to join the Bisons for the 1881 campaign, naming him player-manager. In his first year at the helm, the Bisons’ win total improved by 21 from the previous season. His leadership led to competitive play and Buffalo finished within 10½ games of first from 1881 to 1883.

Some of their stiffest competition came from the White Stockings. For three straight seasons, from 1880 through 1882, Chicago won the NL pennant. In 1883, player-manager Cap Anson’s squad fell to second place, finishing four games behind Boston. The White Stockings had struggled early in 1884, beginning the season by winning just five of their first 19 games. The team had a reputation as a “hard-drinking crew,” and their off-the-field controversies, coupled with injuries to several players, contributed to poor performances on the diamond.4

Against the Bisons, Anson started veteran right-hander Larry Corcoran. Standing only 5-feet-3 and weighing a mere 127 pounds, the 24-year-old Corcoran was the workhorse of Chicago’s pitching staff. In his first four seasons (1880-1883), he averaged just over 440 innings pitched and 33 wins per season. Corcoran had a rough beginning to 1884, winning just three of his first 11 starts, and he brought a 7-10 record into this game. Further, he was nursing a sore pitching hand with a “felon”5 – a bacterial infection in his fingertip – which affected his grip of the baseball. According to the Buffalo Commercial, “when a felon is on a pitcher’s right index finger, he has no business in the box.”6

The Bisons countered with their ace, 27-year-old Pud Galvin. In 1883 Galvin had led all NL hurlers by starting 75 games, completing 72 of them. He pitched 656⅓ innings and won 46 games.7 Like Corcoran, he had battled injuries early in 1884, starting with one win in his first five games and then missing eight games because of a pulled muscle.8 By the middle of June, however, the right-hander was back in form and had won five consecutive starts.

Buffalo batted first,9 and O’Rourke reached on an error by shortstop King Kelly to start the game. Corcoran walked Jack Rowe, and after George Myers was retired, Dan Brouthers singled to drive in O’Rourke; Brouthers was thrown out trying to stretch his hit into a double. Deacon White followed with a home run, giving Buffalo an early three-run lead.

Both teams were blanked until the Bisons batted in the third. With two outs, White drew a base on balls and went to third on Jim Lillie’s single to center. Chub Collins hit a grounder to first baseman Anson, who muffed the play, allowing White to score. Davy Force’s single to left field brought Lillie home. It was now 5-0.

In the bottom of the third, Chicago’s Abner Dalrymple hit a one-out home run over the right-field fence.10 George Gore reached on an infield hit, and Kelly was safe on an error. Anson then drove both runners home with a double to right, reducing Chicago’s deficit to two runs.

O’Rourke got one of the runs back by hitting a home run in the top of the fourth. At that point, Corcoran’s sore hand finally “gave out,”11 and third baseman Ed Williamson relieved him in the pitcher’s box.12 Amazingly, according to the Commercial, in the first three frames, Corcoran had “used his right and left hand alternately, but it was no go.”13 Corcoran remained in the game at shortstop, as Anson also moved Kelly from short to third base. In the fifth, both Collins and Galvin reached on fielding errors, and O’Rourke collected two more runs batted in with a single off Williamson.

The White Stockings tallied once in the fifth. King singled, took third on Anson’s single, and scored on a groundout by Fred Pfeffer.

The Bisons made it a rout in the sixth. They scored six runs on five hits, two Chicago errors, and a wild pitch. At some point in the inning, Kelly took over the mound duties and Williamson went back to third base. Buffalo now led, 14-4.

In the Chicago half of the sixth, Silver Flint reached on a walk by Galvin. Corcoran singled, and both runners scored on Gore’s double. Kelly followed with a “rattler to left,”14 and Gore scored. The White Stockings still trailed by seven runs.

Buffalo notched two more runs in the seventh (although the papers give no description), as well as two more in the eighth, when Brouthers hit a two-run home run. All four runs were charged to Kelly. In the ninth, Pfeffer became the fourth Chicago pitcher of the game, and Kelly took over as the White Stockings’ second baseman, his fourth position of the day. Pfeffer, however, didn’t have any better success than his predecessors. Force’s single and back-to-back triples by O’Rourke and Rowe resulted in Buffalo’s last two runs, giving them 20 for the game.

Chicago added solo runs in the eighth (Corcoran tripled and scored on a Galvin wild pitch) and in the ninth. After 2½ hours, the game was finally finished, and Buffalo had won 20-9. The Bisons banged out 20 hits, six more than the White Stockings.

Despite not being able to pitch effectively, Corcoran had led the White Stockings offense with two triples and a single, and he scored twice. He recovered from his hand injury and made 59 starts in 1884, finishing with 35 wins and a 2.40 earned-run average.15

Galvin won his sixth straight start. He won his next two as well, and the future Hall of Famer won 46 games for the second straight season, posting a 1.99 ERA. He struck out 369 batters in 636 innings.

O’Rourke became the second player in Buffalo franchise history to hit for the cycle, joining Curry Foley, who was the first player to ever accomplish the rare feat, doing so on May 25, 1882. O’Rourke was the only batter to hit for the cycle in 1884, a season in which 33 clubs competed in three major leagues. He led the NL in batting average (.347) and hits (162). He also notched his best year to date in RBIs (63).16 At the end of the season, he signed with the New York Giants.

Buffalo won the June 17 game against Chicago, 8-7, on its way to eight wins in a row. The Bisons finished 1884 in third place with 64 wins, 19½ games behind the Providence Grays. Chicago played .500 baseball from the beginning of June through September 1, but Anson’s team miraculously won 21 of its final 25 games to climb back into fourth place in the NL standings, finishing 22 games back.17 That success carried over into 1885, as the White Stockings regained their top form and won the pennant. They captured it again in 1886.

Author’s Note 

With his four base hits in this game, O’Rourke became the fifth player in major-league history to hit for the cycle. Newspaper coverage indicates that – after reaching on an error in the first – he homered in the fourth, singled in the fifth, and tripled in the ninth, but the papers do not report when O’Rourke hit his two-bagger. In fact, not every newspaper credits him in its box score with a double. In every box score of the five newspapers listed in this article’s sources, O’Rourke is shown with four hits in seven at-bats, but only the Buffalo Commercial credits him with a double. The Buffalo Courier, which provided the bulk of the play-by-play, does not credit him with a two-base hit. Nor do the Buffalo Times, the Chicago Tribune, or the Chicago Inter Ocean. Nevertheless, twenty-first-century references such as Retrosheet.org and Baseball-Almanac.com credit him with hitting for the cycle,18 which implies he did get a double.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Joe Wancho 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. With no play-by-play available on Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org, the author based the game’s play-by-play on details found in the Chicago Tribune, the Inter Ocean, the Buffalo Courier, the Buffalo Commercial and the Buffalo Times.

Notes

1 “Sporting News. The Chicago League Team Again Defeated – Providence the Victor,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1884: 11.

2 “Four Broken Pitchers,” Buffalo Courier, June 17, 1884: 4.

3 “Jim O’Rourke Stats, Baseball-Almanac.com, accessed January 6, 2024, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=orouji01. Later in his career, O’Rourke had an 11-year hiatus between hits. In 1904 the 54-year-old O’Rourke appeared in his 1,999th and final major-league game. According to O’Rourke’s SABR biography, “With the New York Giants on the verge of their first pennant since 1889, manager John McGraw summoned O’Rourke, the last active member of that old championship team, to catch the title clincher. And the old warrior did not disappoint, handling Joe McGinnity over all nine innings of a 7-5 victory over Cincinnati. He even went 1-for-4 at the plate.”

4 David Fleitz, “Cap Anson,” SABR Biography Project. Anson himself was known as a teetotaler.

5 “Sporting,” Buffalo Commercial, June 17, 1884: 3.

6 “Sporting.”

7 Galvin’s 46 victories in 1883 were third-best all-time to that point, behind Old Hoss Radbourn’s 48 (Providence, 1883) and Chicago’s Al Spalding and New York’s John Ward who each won 47 (in 1876 and 1879, respectively). In 1884, with the increase of about 15 games played per team, Galvin again won 46, but Radbourn set the current record of 60. While Louisville’s Guy Hecker won 52 and Boston’s Charlie Buffinton won 48 games.

8 Galvin supposedly injured himself on May 10 in Providence by “picking up his suitcase at Providence’s Narragansett Hotel, possibly the result of pitching in the cold without his sweatshirt the day before.” See Charles Hausberg, “Pud Galvin,” SABR Biography Project.

9 For more on the history of home teams batting first, see Gary Belleville, “The Death and Rebirth of the Home Team Batting First,” Baseball Research Journal, Vol 52, No. 1 (2023), https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-death-and-rebirth-of-the-home-team-batting-first/.

10 Dalrymple finished third in the NL with 22 homers – more than he hit in his other 11 seasons combined!

11 “Four Broken Pitchers.”

12 In 1884 it was extremely rare for teams to use a relief pitcher. The White Stockings played 112 games that year, and there were 106 complete games. It was similar for the Bisons (114 games played, 108 complete games). In 912 National League games, there were 863 complete games. Corcoran appeared in 60 games, starting 59 and relieving in one. Of his 59 starts, he completed 57. For Buffalo, Galvin started all 72 games in which he appeared, and he pitched 71 complete games.

13 “Sporting.”

14 “Four Broken Pitchers.”

15 Kelly and Williamson made just two appearances on the mound for the season, and Pfeffer made just one. In his 16-year career, Kelly pitched in 12 games. His 1884 ERA was 8.44. Williamson also pitched in 12 games in his 13-year career, posting an 18.00 ERA in 1884. Pfeffer appeared in eight games on the mound. His 1884 ERA was 9.00. Anson had also made one pitching appearance in 1884, but as he gave up four runs (two earned) in just one inning of work, perhaps he felt he should not insert himself as a reliever in this blowout.

16 While with the New York Giants, O’Rourke saw his RBI totals skyrocket: He knocked in at least 80 runs in five different seasons, including 115 in 1890.

17 This stretch of games (from September 2 to October 11) included winning streaks of 10 and 9 games.

18 “Cycles Chronologically,” Retrosheet.org, accessed January 6, 2024, https://www.retrosheet.org/cycles_chron.htm; “Hit for the Cycle,” Baseball-Almanac.com, accessed January 6, 2024, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/hitting/Major_League_Baseball_Players_to_hit_for_the_cycle.shtml.