June 9, 1903: Pirates’ streak of 56 scoreless innings pitched snapped by Phillies

After they were thumped 10-2 by the New York Giants on June 1, 1903, it seemed unlikely that the Pittsburgh Pirates would go on to win their third consecutive National League pennant. Since May 1, Pittsburgh hurlers had surrendered an uncharacteristic 5.2 runs per game, dropping the Pirates into third place, 4½ games behind the league leaders in Chicago.1

But a barely noticeable aspect of the game’s box score was the start of the Pirates’ resurgence. Pittsburgh starter Ed Doheny, who had been on the mound for all 10 Giants runs, managed to keep John McGraw’s sluggers off the scoreboard in their final two at-bats.

It was the beginning of a spectacular streak of pitching that may never be equaled. The Pirates reeled off six consecutive shutouts, including two whitewashes of the hard-hitting Giants and three more against the fifth-place Boston Nationals.2

Rookie Irvin “Kaiser” Wilhelm’s shutout of Boston on June 4 was the first of his career. In his next start, eight days after Pittsburgh’s remarkable run began, he faced the Philadelphia Phillies. After breezing through the first three innings, Wilhelm gave up a run when rookie John Titus – playing in his second major-league game – drove in Roy Thomas with his fourth-inning fly ball, snapping the scoreless innings streak at 56.3 Wilhelm settled for a 7-3 win, the Pirates’ seventh in a row.

The Pirates had cruised to back-to-back NL pennants, finishing 7½ games ahead of their nearest competitor in 1901 and a whopping 27½ games out front in 1902.4 Although they were one of the few NL teams to avoid losing any marquee players in the American League player raids, their good fortune came to a halt in October 1902.5 In one of the first – but certainly not the last – instance of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) using their financial might to secure top talent, the fledgling AL franchise poached five Pittsburgh players for its inaugural season, including star hurlers Jack Chesbro (28-6, 2.17 ERA) and Jesse Tannehill (20-6, 1.95 ERA). The Pirates responded by plucking 35-year-old righty Brickyard Kennedy off the scrapheap and using a string of untested rookie hurlers in 1903.6

The Pittsburgh pitching staff rebounded from its struggles when the calendar flipped to June. The Pirates’ lengthy shutout streak – hurled with Kennedy out with an injury – had nearly come to an end at 52 innings with Sam Leever on the mound on June 8.7 The Phillies put runners on second and third with two outs in the ninth and Pittsburgh leading, 2-0. Pinch-hitter Klondike Douglass smacked a liner that appeared headed into left-center field for a single. But Honus Wagner, playing a deep shortstop, made a sensational leaping grab to end the game and preserve the shutout streak.8

The six consecutive shutouts – two each by veterans Leever and Deacon Phillippe and one by Doheny and Wilhelm − pulled the Pirates within 1½ games of first place with a 31-17 mark. Coming into the second game of their series at Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park on June 9, the sad-sack Phillies were mired in seventh place, 17 games out of first.

Philadelphia player-manager Charles “Chief” Zimmer, a catcher with the Pirates from 1900 to 1902, tapped 29-year-old Bill Duggleby to start for the Phillies. Duggleby, a side-arming righty with a 3-5 record, surrendered a one-out triple in the first inning to Pittsburgh player-manager Fred Clarke. The next batter, Jimmy Sebring, hit a grounder to shortstop Rudy Hulswitt, who threw home wildly, allowing Clarke to score the game’s first run.9

Wilhelm, a 26-year-old righty with a 2-2 record, was making his seventh big-league appearance. He faced the minimum number of batters through the first three innings,10 extending Pittsburgh’s streak of scoreless innings to 56.

The Pirates blew the game wide open when they scored five runs in the third on five hits, a walk, and an error. Ginger Beaumont, Sebring, Wagner, and Claude Ritchey all singled in the inning; Tommy Leach reached on a two-bagger.11

Thomas, Philadelphia’s center fielder, opened the fourth by tapping a slow roller to Leach at third base for an infield single. One out later, Bill “Wagon Tongue” Keister hit a grounder up the middle that struck the second-base bag and bounded into center field for a single, putting runners on the corners. Titus, 0-for-4 in his major-league debut the day before, was up next. He launched a high fly ball to Clarke in left field and Thomas tagged up, trotting home with the first run scored against the Pirates in over a week. The run cut Pittsburgh’s lead to 6-1.

The Phillies touched Wilhelm for two more runs in the sixth. Philadelphia third baseman Bill Hallman, playing for the injured Harry Wolverton,12 singled and scored on Keister’s triple. Keister came home on Titus’s groundout to Wagner at short.

Pittsburgh added a run in the bottom of the sixth on an RBI single by Wagner, which widened the lead to 7-3 and raised his batting average to .368. (Wagner went on to win his second of eight career batting titles with a .355 average.)

The Phillies loaded the bases with two outs in the ninth, bringing Hallman to the plate representing the potential tying run.13 Wagner tried to pull off the hidden-ball trick, but the veteran Hallman foiled his attempt by alerting the Philadelphia baserunners.14 Wilhelm retired Hallman for the final out, giving Pittsburgh its seventh straight win.

“The record made by the Pirates of six successive shutouts [and 56 consecutive scoreless innings] is one that is liable to last forever in baseball,” enthused the Pittsburgh Gazette. “The remarkable work of the team is the talk of the country.”15 As of the end of the 2024 season, the Pirates still held the NL/AL records for consecutive shutouts and scoreless innings pitched. The closest any NL or AL team has come to matching those marks was in 1974 when the Baltimore Orioles tossed five straight shutouts and 54 consecutive scoreless innings.

Although the scoreless streak was broken, the Pirates’ winning streak marched on. They completed the three-game sweep of Philadelphia the next day with a 7-4 victory and then Phillippe and Leever tossed back-to-back shutouts, giving each pitcher a personal three-game shutout streak.16 Pittsburgh made it 15 wins in a row before losing on June 25. By then, the Bucs were atop the NL standings, 2½ games ahead of the second-place Giants. It was a lead the Pirates would not relinquish.

But Pittsburgh’s pitching staff began to thin out late in the season. On August 27 Clarke made a surprising move by releasing Wilhelm despite the young hurler’s respectable 5-3 record and 3.24 ERA.17 The transaction was even more questionable considering the erratic behavior that another hurler, Doheny, had been exhibiting that summer. Doheny’s mental health issues worsened in September and the 16-game winner was granted a leave of absence and put under the care of a physician. He was later institutionalized, never to pitch again.

An even bigger blow to the pitching staff came in late September when Leever, who went 25-7 and won the NL’s ERA title with a 2.06 ERA, injured his pitching shoulder in a trapshooting contest. The Pirates limped to the finish line, winning only 9 of their last 21 games. They still ended up 6½ games ahead of the second-place Giants with a 91-49-1 record.

Heading into the inaugural “modern” World Series against the Boston Americans, the Pirates pitching staff was severely weakened by the loss of Doheny and Wilhelm and the injury to Leever. Just four months earlier, the trio had combined to toss 41 of the record 56 consecutive scoreless innings.

“When I made the contract with Henry J. Killilea, owner of the Boston American team, for the post-season series, I had three pitchers, all in shape,” explained Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss. “The morning after the arrangements for the series had been perfected, Doheny, our crack southpaw, went wrong. To add to this, Sam Leever … was unable to use his arm.”18

Clarke was forced to rely heavily on his other 25-game winner, Phillippe, in the best-of-nine World Series. Phillippe courageously pitched complete-game victories in Game One, Game Three, and Game Four. Leever, pitching for the first time in two weeks, lasted only one inning in a 3-0 loss in Game Two.

But it was all downhill for the Pirates after they took a 3-1 Series lead. Kennedy was roughed up in a blowout loss in Game Five and the Pirates, despite Leever’s gutsy complete game, lost Game Six by a 6-3 score. Clarke, having confidence in only one of his starters, sent Phillippe back out to pitch Game Seven and Game Eight.19 Boston was victorious in both contests, taking the Series five games to three. In an ironic twist, the team that tossed an astounding six consecutive shutouts and 56 straight scoreless innings went on to lose the World Series because of a lack of pitching.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Jim Sweetman and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Stathead.com, and the SABR biographies of Ed Doheny, Bill Duggleby, Irvin “Kaiser” Wilhelm, Sam Leever, and Carl J. Horner. Unless otherwise noted, all detailed play-by-play information for this game was taken from the article “After 56 Innings a Run is Scored” in the June 10, 1903, edition of the Pittsburgh Post.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT190306090.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1903/B06090PIT1903.htm

Photo credit

The photo of Irvin Wilhelm was part of the team photo of the 1903 NL champions produced by Carl J. Horner, the “official photographer” of the major leagues.

Notes

1 The Pirates had allowed only 3.1 runs per game (2.30 ERA) in 1902 and 3.8 runs per game (2.58 ERA) in 1901.

2 The shutouts against the Giants were thrown by Deacon Phillippe on June 2 and Sam Leever on June 3. The shutouts against the Boston Nationals were thrown by Irvin “Kaiser” Wilhelm on June 4, Doheny on June 5, and Phillippe on June 6 in a six-inning rain-shortened contest. Leever tossed the sixth shutout on June 8 against the Phillies.

3 The Pittsburgh Post, the Pittsburgh Gazette, and the Associated Press wire story for the game all reported that Thomas scored the first run on a fly ball by Titus. According to Sporting Life, Titus drove in two men, “the first of which broke Pittsburg’s wonderful shutout record.” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Thomas scored on a hit by Bill “Wagon Tongue” Keister. As of September 2024, the box scores on Retrosheet and Baseball Reference did not include play-by-play data, although both credited Keister with two RBIs in the game and Titus with none. The box score (and player statistics) may change when Retrosheet publishes the play-by-play data for this game. “After 56 Innings a Run is Scored,” Pittsburgh Post, June 10, 1903: 8; “Shutout Streak Finally Broken,” Pittsburgh Gazette, June 10, 1903: 9; Associated Press, “Pittsburg 7, Philadelphia 3,” Shreveport Times, June 10, 1903: 3; “Pres. Potter’s Pick,” Sporting Life, June 20, 1903: 2; “Duggleby Rattled and Phillies Lost,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 10, 1903: 10.

4 Pittsburgh set a franchise record for winning percentage (.741) in 1902 when it went 103-36-3. As of the end of the 2024 season, the 1902 Pirates still held the franchise record for the best winning percentage.

5 A peace agreement between the NL and AL was signed in January 1903. Tom Simon, ed., Deadball Stars of the National League, (Dulles, Virginia: Brassey’s, Inc., 2004), 141.

6 Kennedy had been released by the New York Giants in June 1902. The Pirates signed him in January 1903. Rookie pitchers used by the Pirates during the 1903 season included Wilhelm, Bucky Veil, Cy Falkenburg, Gus Thompson, Lave Winham, Jack Pfiester, Doc Scanlon, and Lew Moren. Only one rookie pitched for the Pirates in 1902: Harvey Cushman (0-4, 7.36 ERA).

7 Kennedy pitched for the Pirates only once in June, a three-inning relief outing on June 26. The Pittsburgh Post reported on June 24 that “the strain, which put him out of business a month ago, was not in evidence.” Kennedy went 9-6 with a 3.45 ERA in 1903, his final season in the big leagues. “Another Idle Day for the Pirates,” Pittsburgh Post, June 24, 1903: 8.

8 “Another Shutout for the Pirates,” Pittsburgh Gazette, June 9, 1903: 9.

9 Hulswitt led the NL with 81 errors in 1903.

10 The Pittsburgh Post reported that Roy Thomas led off the fourth inning for the Phillies.

11 The RBIs have not been specified because the accounts of the bottom of the third inning in the Pittsburgh Post and Pittsburgh Gazette are significantly different from the one in the Philadelphia Inquirer. There are minor discrepancies in the description of this half-inning in the Pittsburgh Post and Pittsburgh Gazette.

12 Wolverton was removed from the June 8 game with a charley horse. He returned to action on June 16. “Notes of the Game,” Pittsburgh Gazette, June 9, 1903: 9.

13 “Shutout Streak Finally Broken.”

14 “Notes of the Game,” Pittsburgh Gazette, June 10, 1903: 9.

15 “Shutout Streak Finally Broken.”

16 Phillippe pitched a three-hit shutout against the Brooklyn Superbas on June 11. The final two games of the series were rained out and Leever tossed a one-hit shutout against Chicago on June 15. His shutout streak was snapped at 35 innings by the Boston Nationals on June 19. Phillippe’s shutout streak was broken up at 27 innings by Chicago on June 16.

17 Wilhelm’s release may have had something to do with disagreement(s) with Clarke on pitching fundamentals.

18 “Baseball Notes,” Pittsburgh Press, October 14, 1903: 15.

19 Clarke chose not to use rookie Bucky Veil, who held Boston to just one run in seven innings of relief in Game 2. Veil went 5-3 with a 3.82 ERA in 6 starts and 6 relief appearances in the regular season.