May 12, 1915: Fading Christy Mathewson holds off Reds for his first win of season

After 15 seasons of pitching for the New York Giants, many of them dominant, Christy Mathewson was clearly not himself as the 1915 season began. The revered “Matty” lost his first three starts, posting a 4.50 ERA over that span. He was reported to have taken up the spitball for the first time – though one news story noted, “Even with the spitter Matty does not seem to be getting much result.”1

Time and ill health were catching up with the 34-year-old right-hander, the winner of 361 regular-season big-league games entering 1915.2 Mathewson had suffered from a pain in his left side since late in the previous season.3 In 1915 he pitched in only 27 games – the first full season of his career with fewer than 35 appearances – and went 8-14 with a 3.58 ERA, his first losing record since he went 14-17 in 1902.

The twilight of the gods continued in Mathewson’s fourth start, against the Cincinnati Reds on May 12 at the Polo Grounds. Going the distance in front of a rain-soaked crowd of 3,000, many of them sailors on leave,4 Mathewson surrendered 11 hits and five runs, all earned, against a team that closed the season in seventh place. But that was enough for his first win of the season, as the Giants put up six runs against Reds starter Gene Dale.

The game paired one of the National League’s better teams in 1914 against its worst. The 1914 Giants had finished second, 10½ games behind the surprising Boston Braves, with an 84-70 record.5 John McGraw’s team spent 101 days of the season in first place before being overtaken for good by the Boston Braves on September 8. The New Yorkers went only 17-17 that month while the Bostonians posted a torrid 26-5 record. Buck Herzog’s Reds, meanwhile, finished last in 1914 at 60-94.6 In sixth place at the start of September 1914, Cincinnati posted a putrid 4-26 record in that eventful month to fall into the NL basement.

Thus far in 1915, each team had seen a change in fortunes. The Reds entered the May 12 game in fourth place with an 11-10 record,7 3 games behind the first-place Philadelphia Phillies. The Giants had sagged all the way to last with a 6-14 record, 7½ games out. Mathewson blamed the team’s poor start on the performance of its pitching staff. “There is nothing the matter with the Giants except an inability on the part of the pitchers, including myself, to get going,” he said.8 (Over the course of the full season, Giants pitchers led the league in hits and runs surrendered, and were second in earned runs.)

Cincinnati had prolonged the Giants’ woes on May 11, in the first game of a four-game series. Starters Rube Benton of the Reds and Sailor Stroud of the Giants went the distance in an 11-inning battle. The Reds, down to their last out, pushed across a run in the ninth to tie the game 1-1, then scored the winning run in the 11th on a passed ball.

Dale entered the May 12 game with a 3-1 record and a 2.45 ERA in nine previous appearances, all but one in relief. He had pitched ineffectively for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1911 and 1912 before being sent to the Montreal Royals of the International League.9 The Reds purchased him before the 1915 season as part of an effort to shore up their pitching staff, and Dale, using a three-quarters to side-arm motion, made the club out of spring training.10 Over the full season, Dale was a generally positive surprise for the Reds. He started 35 of his 49 games and went 18-17 with a 2.46 ERA. He also led the NL with 107 walks.

The game began in a drizzle, which heightened into a downpour around the seventh inning.11 After a one-two-three top of the first, the Giants came out of the gate as if determined to shake off their funk. With two out, Hans Lobert singled to left field. Art Fletcher grounded to third baseman Heinie Groh, who threw the ball away;12 Lobert took third base and Fletcher first. The pair then pulled off a double steal. Fletcher drew a throw to second, and Lobert started for home;  Cincinnati’s Ivy Olson made a poor return throw to the plate, and Lobert scored to give the home team a 1-0 lead.13

The second inning followed a similar pattern – a routine top half followed by an eventful bottom half. Fred Brainard led off for the Giants with a double. Two outs later, Mathewson drew a walk. George Burns singled to the Reds’ rookie shortstop, Joe Wagner, a native New Yorker playing his only season in the majors. Wagner made a good stop but threw wildly trying for the force at second.14 Brainard scored for a 2-0 lead. Larry Doyle’s grounder stranded Matty and Burns.

Mathewson got the first two outs in the third inning before Dale and Tommy Leach singled. Groh, the former Giant15 whose error had given New York its first run, drove the ball to deep right-center field between the outfielders for an inside-the-park home run, which the Cincinnati Enquirer termed “as pretty a drive as was ever seen.”16 In the span of three batters, Cincinnati had taken a 3-2 lead. Mathewson got George Twombly to end the frame by flying to right.

Through the top of the sixth inning, Dale allowed two more hits and Mathewson three, with neither team getting a runner past second base. In the bottom of the sixth, Fletcher opened with a single and moved to third on a pair of groundouts to Reds first baseman Fritz Mollwitz. After a walk, the Giants’ eighth-place hitter, Red Murray, drove in Fletcher with a single to tie the game, 3-3.

The home-plate umpire, William “Lord” Byron, had a notably quick thumb. In seven seasons as a major-league arbiter, Byron made 198 ejections, leading the NL in that questionable category in all but one season.17 Byron became part of the action in the top of the seventh, when Mollwitz led off with a single and tried to take third on Tommy Clarke’s single. Center fielder Murray’s throw to Lobert cut Mollwitz down as Clarke moved to second. When Mollwitz protested, Byron ejected him; the umpire also ran Benton, the previous day’s starting pitcher, who was serving as third-base coach.

Dale grounded back to the mound,18 and Mathewson fired to third as Clarke tried to advance. Clarke was tagged out by shortstop Fletcher, who threw to second to retire Dale trying to take an extra base.

Red Killefer took Mollwitz’s place. Usually an outfielder, he was playing his second and final big-league game at first base.19 Killefer immediately figured in pivotal action in the bottom of the seventh. Burns led off with his first homer of the year to left field to give New York a 4-3 lead.20 Doyle walked and Lobert singled him to second. Fletcher bunted to third; Groh threw to Killefer in time, but the new first baseman couldn’t find the base with his foot. Fletcher collided with Killefer, and Doyle, running on the bunt, scored.21

Dave Robertson’s bunt moved Lobert to third and Fletcher to second. Brainard grounded to Wagner, but Killefer was again off the bag when he took the throw.22 Lobert scored and New York took a 6-3 lead. The next day’s Cincinnati Enquirer lectured Mollwitz for arguing with the umpire: “It is not bright stuff to get canned in a close contest, bringing nothing but disaster to the team of the kicker.”23

The Giants could have added to their lead in the eighth, as Mathewson hit a one-out double and Burns drew a walk. Doyle flied out to right fielder Tommy Griffith, and Griffith threw out Mathewson trying to take third, for an inning-ending double play.24

Wagner began the ninth inning with a grounder to Mathewson, who fell, got up, and threw wildly to first, allowing the hitter to reach second.25 Mathewson retired Olson and Ivey Wingo, hitting for the luckless Killefer, to pull within an out of victory.

But Clarke singled Wagner home, and Fritz Von Kolnitz, hitting for Dale, laced the only triple of his three-season major-league career to score Clarke, bringing the Reds within 6-5 and putting the tying run 90 feet from home. Leach was next; Mathewson tossed away his soaked glove and faced the final batter barehanded.26 Mathewson induced Leach to fly to Burns in left field, sealing the win and ending the game in 1 hour and 50 minutes.

In the New York Tribune, Grantland Rice expressed hope that Mathewson’s talents were returning. “There were times when he evinced more speed than he has shown so far,” Rice wrote, “and it is more than likely that from now on, with the old wing thawed out under a warmer sun, he will be able to do his share.”27

Unfortunately for sentimental fans, Mathewson won only 11 more games in 1915 and 1916. In July 1916 the Giants traded him to Cincinnati in a deal that also included Herzog, with Mathewson taking over as the Reds’ manager. He pitched one final game as a Red on September 4 – his only appearance as anything other than a Giant – and beat old rival Mordecai Brown in a sloppy 10-8 game to claim his 373rd and final victory.28

Acknowledgments and author’s note

This story was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin. It is part of a project by the author to write stories on all eight American, National, and Federal League games played on May 12, 1915.

Photo credit: Christy Mathewson, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game. Also, Eddie Frierson’s SABR Biography Project biography of Christy Mathewson was a primary source for this article.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NY1/NY1191505120.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1915/B05120NY11915.htm

Notes

1 “Matty Using Spitter, Johnson Curves Them,” Buffalo Evening News, May 12, 1915: Sports: 1.

2 He also had five World Series wins to his credit.

3 Six years later, with the pain worse than ever and Mathewson also suffering from a cough, doctors diagnosed the former pitcher with the tuberculosis that eventually ended his life. Eddie Frierson, “Christy Mathewson,” SABR Biography Project, accessed March 2024. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Christy-Mathewson/.

4 Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference do not list an attendance figure for the game. The 3,000 figure is taken from “Notes of the Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 13, 1915: 10.

5 And two ties.

6 And three ties.

7 And two ties.

8 “Poor Pitching Upsets ‘Dope’ in Major League,” Buffalo Commercial, May 12, 1915: 7.

9 Dale went 0-2 with a 6.75 ERA in five pitching appearances in 1911, and 0-5 with a 6.57 ERA in 19 games pitched in 1912.

10 Bill Lamb, “Gene Dale,” SABR Biography Project, accessed March 2024. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Gene-Dale/.

11 Jack Ryder, “Generous Are Those Red Athletes,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 13, 1915: 10.

12 Ryder.

13 Ryder.

14 Heywood Broun, “Matty Comes Through with First Victory,” New York Tribune, May 13, 1915: 14.

15 He was also a future Giant: Groh played for the team in 1912 and 1913, then returned from 1922 to 1926.

16 Ryder, “Generous Are Those Red Athletes”; Broun, “Matty Comes Through with First Victory”; “Notes of the Game.”

17 Byron ejected 41 people in 1915; he’d thumbed 37 the previous season. Retrosheet’s entry for Byron has his ejection totals bolded for every season but 1918, when he ejected a relatively modest 11 people; the boldface indicates that he led the league.

18 Game stories’ descriptions of this play do not suggest or indicate that Dale was bunting or sacrificing, but rather that he swung away and grounded back to the mound.

19 Killefer played his only other big-league game at first base the day before.

20 Broun, “Matty Comes Through with First Victory.”

21 Ryder, “Generous Are Those Red Athletes.”

22 Ryder; Broun, “Matty Comes Through with First Victory.”

23 Ryder.

24 “Notes of the Game.”

25 Broun, “Matty Comes Through with First Victory.”

26 Broun.  Retrosheet’s game summary suggests Mathewson discarded his glove at the start of the ninth inning, but this story specifically places the action at Leach’s at-bat.

27 Grantland Rice, “The Sportlight,” New York Tribune, May 13, 1915: 15.

28 Mathewson was briefly part of the Reds’ organization during the 1900-1901 offseason as part of a collusive plan between the Giants and Reds, allowing the Giants to keep Mathewson on their roster while spending less money. (The Reds drafted Mathewson and then traded him back to the Giants.) Frierson, “Christy Mathewson.”