June 17, 1889: George Goetz’s only major-league win extends Louisville’s losing streak to 21

When the Baltimore Orioles hosted the Louisville Colonels for an American Association doubleheader at Oriole Park on June 17, 1889, the visitors hadn’t won a game in almost four weeks. After defeating Baltimore on May 21, the Colonels had lost 20 straight, more than any other Association or National League team.

Louisville’s 19th and 20th consecutive losses came in the first two contests of the Baltimore series, on June 13 and 15. Adding to the Colonels’ woes, on June 14 six of their players staged a strike. It was the first such labor action in major-league history.1 The immediate reason for this protest was $25 fines imposed by “Manager” (president/owner) Mordecai Davidson on two players for poor performances in the game on June 13. Second baseman Dan Shannon (who became the third of the Colonels’ four managers that season) was penalized for errors afield, while catcher Paul Cook incurred Davidson’s wrath for clueless baserunning.

Joining the strike were outfielder Pete Browning, pitcher Red Ehret, first baseman Guy Hecker, and third baseman Harry Raymond. Hecker identified their other main reason for striking: They hadn’t been paid their salaries in more than a month.2

Late on Sunday, June 16, an offday, Davidson reported the strike’s termination. All six players assured him they would try their hardest in Monday’s doubleheader. Davidson said no action would be taken against strikers until the team returned home on June 20.3

On June 17 a small front-page ad in the Baltimore Sun touted a single admission of 25 cents to see both games. The ad also noted that Orioles newcomer George Goetz was expected to pitch in a regular-season game for the first time. The scheduled starting times were 2:00 and 4:15 P.M.4 The temperature reached 88 degrees, while winds peaked at 10 MPH.5

As billed, Goetz made his debut in the earlier game. Louisville’s pitcher was 24-year-old lefty Toad Ramsey, who had won 75 games for the club in 1886 and 1887, against 54 losses. In order, Hecker, Raymond, and Browning batted third through fifth for the Colonels.6

Baltimore starters included shortstop Mike Griffin, who scored the most runs in the American Association that season, 152 in 137 games; first baseman Tommy Tucker, who led the Association in batting average that year at .372; and left fielder Joe Hornung, who had led the National League in runs scored in 1883, with 107 in 98 games.7

The Sun reported the day’s attendance at 2,600, including American Association President Wheeler Wyckoff.8 Louisville players were expected to file a protest with him that day, in response to the fines imposed upon Shannon and Cook, plus one on Raymond.9 The Baltimore American reported that before Wyckoff left for home that evening, “he had another talk with the Louisville players,” which implied at least one other such conversation recently.10

The home-team Orioles chose to bat first and were scoreless in the opening inning. Louisville captain and player-manager Chicken Wolf was the first batter Goetz faced. The count reached three balls and two strikes, and Wolf, normally an outfielder but playing second base on this day, was retired on a grounder to Goetz. Next up was center fielder Farmer Weaver, also known as Buck.11 After a second full count, he likewise grounded back to the pitcher. Goetz completed his first inning unscathed.12

The Colonels scored the day’s first run, an unearned one, in the second frame. Two Baltimore newspapers, the Herald and American, described the game’s scoring in detail but differed on how the Colonels scored that first run. The Herald said Browning was safe at first base after an error and that Stratton’s triple drove him home. The American said Browning reached third base after errors by Griffin and Goetz, and was driven in on a fly to right field by brand-new shortstop Bill Gleason. Regardless, Louisville had a 1-0 lead.

The two dailies were closer to alignment on how Baltimore took the lead in the third inning. They concurred that Baltimore’s seventh- and eighth-place hitters, right fielder Joe Sommer and catcher Bart Cantz, reached with singles. The Herald reported that the keys to the subsequent scoring were errors by Raymond and opposing catcher Farmer Vaughn plus a walk to Griffin. The American elaborated by stating that Sommer scored before Goetz went to bat, on a wild throw by Vaughn that allowed Cantz to advance to second base. Cantz then moved to third on a wild pitch. According to the American, Griffin, rather than drawing a walk, hit a ball to Wolf at second base. Cantz was stuck in a rundown, but “on Raymond’s error both were safe,” according to the American’s account. “Both came in on Raymond’s wild throw to Hecker” for a 3-1 Baltimore lead.13

The Colonels scored once in the bottom of the third and tied the game with one more in the fifth. The third-inning run resulted from a triple by Wolf and a double by Hecker, who scored the tying run in the fifth by singling and coming home on Raymond’s double.

The tie held until Louisville put up three runs in the bottom of the eighth. The Herald reported that hits by Gleason, Stratton, and Ramsey were combined with an error by third baseman Billy Shindle. The American again provided greater detail. Shindle’s error set the stage for Louisville’s productivity that inning, and Raymond was presumably the beneficiary, based on box-score logs of which Colonels scored runs in the game. That would’ve meant Browning followed with an out. Then came Gleason’s and Stratton’s singles, and it’s possible the latter drove in Raymond. If not, Vaughn’s sacrifice in the eighth spot certainly drove in a runner from third because the bases would have been loaded. Ramsey’s single at the bottom of the order drove in the third run of the inning, if not two of the three.14

Was Louisville suddenly about to end its horrible losing streak? In the ninth, second baseman Reddy Mack drew a walk and Hornung singled. Fulmer’s force out retired Mack, but Sommer’s double scored both runners, and he came home on Wolf’s error to tie the game at 6-6.

The Colonels didn’t score in the bottom of the ninth, and one extra inning was required. Shindle drew a walk, and on the next play Gleason made an error (presumably allowing Tucker to reach). Four runs scored when the next three batters hit safely, with a double by Fulmer sandwiched between singles by Hornung and Sommers.15

Bert Cunningham relieved Goetz for the bottom of the 10th. When fans noticed the switch, “a shout of protest went up from the open stand,” the Sun reported. Dissenters presumably wanted Goetz to pitch a complete game. The Sun countered:

The protest was based on sentiment, not on judgment. The management acted wisely. There has   been two [sic] much sentiment in running the club in the past. From this time out it should be run       on business principles.16

The game ended with a final score of 10-6. Newspapers reported that the game lasted from a flat 2 hours to 2 hours and 15 minutes.17 Goetz was credited with the win, in what turned out to be his only major-league game.

There was just one umpire on duty that day, John Gaffney, who was nicknamed “The King of Umpires.” As a sign of the weather conditions that afternoon, the American noted that Gaffney “had so much running around to do that his clothing was completely saturated with perspiration.” He decided a change of attire was necessary. “In the second game he appeared in a uniform of white pants, red stockings and his elastic jumper,” the American reported. “The crowd laughed at the comical rig, but Gaff took the guying good-naturedly.”18

Cook and Ehret were the Louisville battery in the second game, which left Shannon as the only striker not to play that day. One Baltimore daily noted that Shannon had been excused but didn’t say why. Only the batteries changed in the lineups for the second game.

In the second game Baltimore’s Frank Foreman, who pitched 11 seasons from 1884 to 1902 in four different major leagues,19 held Louisville to one hit in a 10-0 Orioles win. The Colonels had lost 22 in a row.

Despite blowing a late lead in the first game and getting clobbered in the second, Davidson didn’t fine any of his players. The teams played a fifth game the next day, one that had been scheduled for Louisville weeks earlier but had been postponed. Baltimore won again, 17-7.20

The Colonels’ streak reached 26 on June 22, and finally ended the following day with a victory over the St. Louis Browns. As of 2023 the streak remained the all-time major-league record.21

The Orioles concluded 1889 with a record of 70-65-4, in fifth place in the eight-team American Association. The Colonels became the first major-league team ever to lose 100 games in a season, finishing last at 27-111, 66½ games out of first place and 28½ games from seventh place. (Miraculously, in 1890 Louisville won the American Association pennant easily!22)

Author’s Note

The author’s research for this article relied on game coverage from three Baltimore newspapers and the Louisville Courier-Journal.23 As noted above, the articles differed in many game details For example, all of the newspapers agreed on the innings in which runs were scored in the first game of the doubleheader, but two Baltimore papers that described the scoring in detail, the Herald and the American, disagreed considerably about the early innings.

Also, three of these papers credited Baltimore with four earned runs and Louisville with just two, while the Sun reported Baltimore with a fifth earned run and the visitors with four instead of a pair. The Sun also differed by excluding a double by Orioles center fielder Chris Fulmer from its list of extra-base hits (though it did mention that hit in its narrative above the box score).

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas Merrick and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information.

Notes

1 Bob Bailey, “Chicken Wolf,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, accessed September 26, 2023, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/chicken-wolf/.

2 Club leadership used three local semipro players on June 14, but heavy rain before the fourth inning resulted in the game’s cancellation. The three strikebreakers – Charles Fisher, Mike Gaul(e), and John Traffley – again formed the Colonels’ outfield on June 15, and each played in the only major-league game of his life. “In a New Role,” Louisville Courier-Journal, June 15, 1889: 6.

3 Hecker, Cook, and teammate Scott Stratton had sought advice about the situation from Orioles manager Billy Barnie who persuaded them to back down. “Gossip of the Diamond,” Baltimore American, June 17, 1889: 5.

4 See the first-column ad in the Baltimore Sun, June 17, 1889: 1.

5 “Weather Observations,” Baltimore Morning Herald, June 18, 1889: 1. “Weather Observations,” Baltimore American, June 18, 1889: 5.

6 Browning, a .341 hitter over 13 major-league seasons, had hit for the cycle in the 14th game of the losing streak, a 9-7, 11-inning loss to the Philadelphia Athletics on June 7.

7 “Gossip of the Diamond,” See also the box scores on that same page.

8 “Two Games in a Day,” Baltimore Sun, June 18, 1889: 6. “Base-Ball Notes,” Baltimore Sun, June 18, 1889: 6. The paper made it clear that Wyckoff stayed for both games.

9 Like the Sun, both papers spelled Association President Wyckoff’s surname as Wikoff. The Courier-Journal’s report on the fines named only Cook and Shannon on the receiving end, so the American might have been incorrect to also mention Raymond in that context. “In a New Role”; “Gossip of the Diamond.”

10 “Gossip of the Diamond.”

11 As of 2023, Baseball-Reference.com identifies one other major leaguer and seven minor leaguers named Buck Weaver, though six of the latter were actually named Buck at birth, reportedly.

12 “Gossip of the Diamond.” See also the box score on that same page.

13 “Two More Games Won,” Baltimore Morning Herald, June 18, 1889: 1; “Hard on Old Kentuck,” Baltimore American, June 18, 1889: 5. Speaking of Hecker, he was the only American Association player ever to homer three times in a single game – all inside the park. “Three Home Runs in a Game,” Baseball-Almanac.com, accessed September 26, 2023, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/3-Home-Runs-In-A-Game.shtml.

14 “Two More Games Won”; “Hard on Old Kentuck.”

15 “Two More Games Won”; “Hard on Old Kentuck.”

16 “Base-Ball Notes,” Baltimore Sun, June 18, 1889: 6. The Sun said, “Cunningham took Goetz’s place in the ninth inning” but Goetz was the winning pitcher and thus remained the pitcher of record through the top of the extra inning.

17 “Two More Games Won”; “Hard on Old Kentuck.”

18 “Gossip of the Diamond.” This compilation also mentioned the ump in a different context: “Reddy Mack yesterday was cautioned by Umpire Gaffney about talking to runners while at the bat. Mack, no doubt, forgets himself.” It might be interesting to know more about the basis for his objection. For insights about Gaffney, see Larry R. Gerlach, “Umpire Honor Rolls,” at http://research.sabr.org/journals/umpire-honor-rolls.

19 “Two Games in a Day,” Baltimore Sun, June 18, 1889: 6.

20 “Base-Ball Notes,” Baltimore Sun, June 18, 1889: 6. “Gossip of the Diamond,” Baltimore American, June 17, 1889: 5. “When Will It End?” Louisville Courier-Journal, June 19, 1889: 6. On the latter page, see also “Notes” one column to the left, where the team was repeatedly referred to as “the Davidsons” and received some sympathy. After Baltimore handed Louisville its 23rd straight loss, one sportswriter said it broke the team’s own record set in 1886, when it “wound up the season by losing twenty-one successive games.” According to Baseball-Reference.com, however, the team ended the 1886 season with a record of 2-21-1 in its final 24 games, with 13 of those losses being consecutive. See J.A., “Louisville Laconics,” Sporting Life, June 26, 1889: 1.

21 Sarah Langs, “Longest Losing Streaks in MLB History,” MLB.com, August 25, 2021, https://www.mlb.com/news/longest-losing-streaks-in-mlb-history. She noted that Louisville’s status was “pending the inclusion of Negro Leagues stats.” The year before the National League formed, the Brooklyn Atlantics of the 1875 National Association lost 31 games in a row, but MLB doesn’t consider that league to be “major.” In 2022 a minor-league team broke Brooklyn’s record among all pro teams by starting its season 0-35; see Ryan Glasspiegel, “The Downs and Ups of the Empire State Greys, the Worst team in Baseball,” New York Post, August 3, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/08/03/the-downs-and-ups-of-the-worst-team-in-baseball/.

22 Chase Cunningham, “Our Baseball Heritage,” Louisville Voice-Tribune, July 14, 2014, accessible (at least via cache) at https://voice-tribune.com/_/news/cover-story/our-baseball-heritage/. “Yesterday’s Games,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 27, 1889: 3. The club was incorrectly shown with just 99 losses in “The Club Standing,” Louisville Courier-Journal, September 27, 1889: 5.

23 “Almost Won It,” Louisville Courier-Journal, June 18, 1889: 2; “Two More Games Won”; “Hard on Old Kentuck”; “Two Games in a Day.”