March 30, 1915: Holy Cross defeats St. John’s College in only meeting between the two schools

1915 Holy Cross Baseball Team

Coming off a 16-2 victory over Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the College of the Holy Cross baseball team traveled to Annapolis, Maryland, to play St. John’s College for the first time on March 30, 1915, the second day of Holy Cross’s nine-game Southern Trip.1 This was likewise the second game of the season for the St. John’s Cadets.2 Their first game was also played against Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, where they suffered an 11-6 loss.

Holy Cross, from Worcester, Massachusetts, was coached by William H. Dyer, who had guided them to a 16-5-1 record in 1914. St. John’s was led by John N. Wilson, a Cadets alumnus who had pitched in three games for the Washington Nationals in 1913. Starting on the mound this day for St. John’s was their captain, Howard Bidwell Matthews; his Holy Cross counterpart was James Hastings.

One of the main storylines of the game, by all accounts, was the weather. The early spring conditions were described as “Zero Weather” – a reference to the temperature on the Celsius scale – and “weather good for football” with a “biting wind.”3

Holy Cross quickly opened the scoring in the top of the first as the leadoff batter, center fielder4 Tommy Long, hit a triple and scored on an infield out. In the top of the second, Holy Cross made it 2-0 when third baseman John Norton walked, reached second on a wild pitch, was sacrificed to third by left fielder Eddie Costello, and scored on first baseman Mark Devlin’s single.

There was no more scoring until the top of the sixth. With one out, catcher Harry Carroll hit a single to left. On a perfectly executed hit-and-run play, Carroll made it to third on Norton’s single through second. Carroll scored on Costello’s fly ball to Fulton Turner in left, making the score 3-0, Holy Cross, which is where it stood after six.

Accounts characterized the game up to this point as a “pitchers’ battle”5 with both moundsmen “pitching a classy article of ball” and, in spite of the score, St. John’s Matthews was singled out for praise as he “mixed a sharp curve with a fast hopper, which greatly puzzled the visiting batsmen.”6 On the other side, Holy Cross’s Hastings had given up only two hits over the six innings while recording just one strikeout, as “the work of the Holy Cross infield was of the highest standard.”7

In the bottom of the seventh, St. John’s first baseman Samuel Freeny8 got the Cadets back in the game with a home run to deep right. After an out, left fielder Turner doubled. Turner scored when the next batter, catcher John Noble, hit a grounder that shortstop Joe Griffin booted. Hastings was able to retire the side with no more runs scoring, keeping the score 3-2, Holy Cross, after seven.

After a scoreless top of the eighth, Holy Cross’s Hastings was relieved by Tim Daley to start the bottom of the inning. Center fielder Herbert Jump walked with one out, stole second, and scored on an error by Long in center, tying the game, 3-3. A scoreless ninth sent the game to extra innings, possibly to the dismay of the remnant of the 400 spectators still braving the cold.

Daley opened the top of the 10th with a smash to right-center, which he turned into a triple. Long followed with a single through the middle of the diamond, scoring Daley and putting Holy Cross in the lead, 4-3. Daley pitched a scoreless bottom half, preserving the victory. Daley scored the winning run and was the winning pitcher. Despite giving up the tying run in the eighth, he pitched well in relief, striking out six and giving up two hits in his three-inning stint. Matthews, who ended up with a 10-inning complete game, allowing seven hits and striking out 14, took the loss.

Holy Cross played Mount St. Joseph in Baltimore the next day. The team then returned to Annapolis to play the US Naval Academy, then went back to Baltimore to play Yale at Terrapin Park and traveled to Washington to play two games with Georgetown. A scheduled game with Catholic University in Washington was snowed out. The trip ended with a game against Columbia in New York.

Holy Cross finished the 1915 season with 16 wins and 14 losses. As of 2025, Holy Cross – officially known as the Crusaders beginning in 19259 – has appeared in the NCAA tournament 12 times, winning the College World Series in 1952, and sent 79 players to the major leagues. Five players from Holy Cross have appeared in more than 1,000 big-league games: Jimmy Ryan (2,014); Joe Dugan (1,447); Tommy Dowd (1,321); Jack Barry, who coached the team from 1921 to 1960 (1,223); and Jack McCarthy (1,092).

1915 St. John’s (Maryland) Baseball Team

St. John’s ended the 1915 season with a record of 7 wins and 11 losses. Its intercollegiate baseball program, established in 1892, ended play in 1928 after a student vote on the school’s athletic priorities. The student body voted 60 to 50 to keep lacrosse and eliminate baseball.10 Baseball-Reference lists four major leaguers from St. John’s: Bill Lamar (550 major-league games), Dick Porter (675), Jim Stevens (2), and the coach in 1915, John Wilson (3).

Samuel Freeny – the only player from the 1915 Holy Cross-St. John’s game to play professionally, appearing in Class D leagues in 1915, 1916, and 1926 – reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps. Wounded at Corregidor in the Philippines in 1942, Freeny was held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese and was murdered in a group execution in December 1944.11

Author’s Note

This game turned out to be the only time the two schools played each other, but there is another interesting aspect in that it was “lost” to history. As the St. John’s baseball program ended nearly a century before the author researched this article in 2025, records of their baseball games are buried deep in the school’s archives.12

By contrast, the Holy Cross baseball program has kept records going back to 1876 and published an annual baseball yearbook until 2014. An entry in the Holy Cross (HC) vs. Opponent section of the 2011 Yearbook states:

Team: St. John’s
Record: HC 2 wins 1 loss
Series Began: 1915.13

As it turns out, this entry conflates the game in 1915 with St. John’s College with the two games Holy Cross played against St. John’s University of New York City in 1978, which the teams split.14 Bringing results up to 2025, what the Holy Cross records should have are two entries: 

Team: St. John’s (MD)
Record: HC 1 win 0 losses
Series Began: 1915   

Team: St. John’s (NY)
Record: HC  2 wins 9 losses
Series Began: 197815

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo Credits: College of the Holy Cross, “Purple Patcher 1915” (1915). Purple Patcher Yearbook. 77, 210, accessed July 29, 2025, https://crossworks.holycross.edu/purple_patcher/77.

Cox, Marion, ed., “Rat Tat 1916,” St. John’s College Digital Archives, accessed July 29, 2025, https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1372.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team and season data.

Box score from the Springfield Daily Republican, March 31, 1915.

Notes

1 According to the school’s website, St. John’s College is a coeducational liberal-arts college founded in 1696 as King William’s School and chartered in 1784 with a strong commitment to collaborative inquiry and to the study of original texts. Besides the Annapolis campus, it has a campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “About St. John’s,” St. John’s College, https://www.sjc.edu/about. Accessed July 28, 2025.

2 At the time, St. John’s had its own military department and all students except those physically disqualified were required to take part; so the athletic teams were called the Cadets.

3 “Triple and Single,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Daily Republican, March 31, 1915: 10. “Holy Cross in the Tenth,” Fall River Globe, March 31, 1915: 6. The statement about “Zero Weather” refers to the Celsius scale. According to National Weather Service records for March 30, 1915, in Annapolis, the low was 24 degrees Fahrenheit, which did make it the coldest day of the month.

4 In the box score, the designation for this position is m. for midfielder, which historically has been used as a synonym for center fielder. “Midfielder – Baseball Dictionary,” Baseball-Almanac.com, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/dictionary-term.php?term=midfielder. Accessed July 28, 2025.

5 “Extra Inning Is Needed for This,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Morning Union, March 31, 1915: 14.

6 “Triple and Single.”

7 “Holy Cross 4, St. John’s 3,” Boston Globe, March 31, 1915: 7.

8 In the box score and in the account of the game, his name is spelled “Freeney.”

9 Melville E. Webb, “Coaches Face Big Problem,” Boston Globe, October 8, 1925: 22.

10 “Stick Game Is Selected, Baltimore Sun, May 29, 1928: 17. The vote was taken after the lacrosse team had its most successful season while the baseball team had a “disappointing season.” A comparison of the St. John’s catalogs for 1927-1928 and 1928-1929 shows the school also dropped its track and tennis intercollegiate programs after the 1927-1928 academic year. As of 2025, it engages in four intercollegiate sports” crew, sailing, fencing, and, most famously, croquet. The Governor’s Cup, the annual croquet match between St, John’s and the US Naval Academy, celebrated its 41st anniversary in April 2025. “Athletics + Fitness,” St. John’s College, https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/campus-life/athletics-fitness. Accessed July 28, 2025.

11 Gary Bedingfield, “Sam Freeny,” Baseball’s Greatest Sacrifice, https://www.baseballsgreatestsacrifice.com/biographies/freeny-sam.html. Accessed November 23, 2025. Bedingfield writes that while it’s not listed at Baseball-Reference.com, Sam Freeney did play for the Salisbury Indians of the Class D Eastern Shore League under the name of Samuel Wilson.

12 Special thanks to Sammy Young of the Greenfield Library at St. John’s College for her assistance in gathering information about St. John’s baseball in the school’s archives.

13 2011 Holy Cross Baseball Yearbook, https://goholycross.com/documents/2015/7/23/2011baseballguide.pdf. Accessed July 20, 2025.

14 This mistake lasted until at least 2014; The 2014 Holy Cross Baseball Yearbook, the last yearbook available on the web, has a similar entry.

15 “2025 Baseball Record Book Final,” redstormsports.com, https://redstormsports.com/documents/2025/2/16/2025_Baseball_Record_Book_FINAL.pdf. Accessed July 20, 2025.