May 13, 1901: Eddie Plank begins Hall of Fame career with two relief innings in Athletics’ loss to Baltimore

Despite successful stints pitching for town teams and Gettysburg College in, Pennsylvania, Eddie Plank never drew much attention from professional scouts and managers.1

There are various theories on how Connie Mack eventually discovered the future Hall of Famer at Gettysburg College.2 But no matter how the “Tall Tactician” received word about the blossoming pitcher, it is not surprising that Mack was willing to add the 25-year-old left-hander to the roster of his newly formed Philadelphia Athletics in 1901.

Throughout Mack’s tenure as manager of the minor-league Milwaukee Brewers, he had proved he would take chances on promising young players. By 1898, Mack had developed such a penchant for prospecting that his biographer Norman Macht suggested the former major-league catcher would have known “he might have to sift through hundreds of green rookies to find one gold nugget.”3

After league President Ban Johnson declared that his American League would compete directly with the established National League as a major league in 1901, he shuffled some of the franchises from his former Class A circuit to go head-to-head against NL franchises in Boston and Philadelphia, the country’s third-largest city.4

As part of that reorganization, the 38-year-old Mack went from Milwaukee to Philadelphia, and he continued searching for diamonds in the rough as manager of the Athletics. The pitchers he brought to the mound at Oriole Park in Baltimore on May 13 illustrate his approach.

With his club sitting at 5-8, Mack started Charles “Bock” Baker, a 22-year-old southpaw whom Cleveland had cast off after his dismal major-league debut two weeks earlier. Baker struggled through six innings, so Mack called in Plank – who was so green that he made his major-league debut wearing his Gettysburg College uniform instead of matching his future A’s teammates.5

Baker, who never pitched in the majors again, and Plank, who went on to a masterful 17-year career as one of Mack’s biggest gold nuggets, combined to allow 14 runs on nine hits and eight walks. The A’s defense also committed seven errors in a 14-5 loss to John McGraw’s veteran Orioles, who scored in all but one inning to back starter Joe “Iron Man” McGinnity and improve to 8-5 in front of 2,794 Monday afternoon fans. It was the second game in a four-game series.

As in his debut, against the Chicago White Sox on April 28, Baker struggled from the onset. Wild as a “proverbial hare,” he walked McGraw, Mike Donlin, and Jimmy Williams to open the game.6 McGraw and Donlin scored when Athletics second baseman Nap Lajoie tried to turn a double play on Bill Keister’s grounder but threw the ball well past first base. Keister made it to third and later scored for a 3-0 lead.

Baltimore’s advantage doubled in the second when Wilbert Robinson and McGinnity opened with singles, McGraw bunted himself aboard, and Donlin smashed his league-leading sixth triple to clear the bases.7 A strong throw from A’s left fielder Dave Fultz was relayed home by shortstop Harry Lochhead, and Donlin was tagged out at the plate by catcher Doc Powers while trying for what would have been his third home run in five games.8

In the bottom of the third, Cy Seymour – formerly a front-line starting pitcher who had become a full-time outfielder after injuring his arm in 1900 – walked, stole second, moved to third on a sacrifice, and scored on an out for a 7-0 lead. The A’s had won the day before, but this game highlighted some of the differences in how the teams constructed their rosters.

The Orioles snatched a good chunk of their lineup from the NL to form a veteran core. They signed Robinson, Keister, Donlin, and McGraw away from the St. Louis Cardinals, Williams from the Pittsburgh Pirates, Seymour from the New York Giants, and McGinnity, who led the NL with 28 wins in both 1899 and 1900, from the Brooklyn Superbas.

Mack had worked to build Philadelphia’s roster in the offseason, but contract-jumping and a court case involving players pillaged from the crosstown Philadelphia Phillies left him uncertain of his roster as Opening Day approached.9 While he had a core of players, only three of them were starting pitchers. In the first 13 games of the season, Mack used 16 players – including two rookie pitchers who wouldn’t stick, Pete Loos and Billy Milligan.10 Baker and Plank became the 17th and 18th players to appear for the A’s, who used 31 players throughout the season, including 12 rookies.11

But the general roster uncertainty didn’t stop the A’s from trying to claw their way into their 7-0 deficit in the top of the fourth.

Fultz doubled to kick off a rally that included hits, walks, and a costly error by Baltimore shortstop Keister to give the A’s four runs.12 Pitcher Baker drove home the last run of the rally with what turned out to be his only major-league hit.

A pair of Philadelphia errors helped two more Baltimore runs score in the bottom of the inning, and the Orioles added another pair of runs in the sixth for an 11-4 lead that chased Baker from the game – and ultimately ended his career.

Baker, who had jumped a contract with the Class A St. Joseph (Missouri) Saints to join the A’s, was quickly released by Mack.13 He closed his brief major-league tenure 0-2 with a 7.71 ERA and 2.929 WHIP.14

Plank, standing 5-feet-11 and weighing 175 pounds, relieved in the seventh, and veteran catcher Morgan Murphy came in to handle the rookie’s crossfire delivery.15 Known for his fidgeting on the mound, Plank seemed to have a little bit of debut nerves, as he walked the first man he faced, Frank Foutz, who came around to score by the end of the inning. Baltimore scored twice in the eighth, highlighted by Keister’s triple and Williams’s double. In his two innings, Plank allowed three earned runs on three hits and two walks. He struck out one batter and went 0-for-1 at the plate.

“The collegian showed much promise,” wrote the Baltimore Morning Herald, “and when he got limbered up had the Orioles guessing. Plank has plenty of speed and a good drop curve that will prove effective when under control.”16

Philadelphia’s last run came in the eighth when Monte Cross hit an RBI double that scored Lajoie, the eventual Triple Crown winner who was held to a single hit for only the second time in the season.17 

But that was not nearly enough to overtake Baltimore, as McGinnity became the first AL pitcher to five wins. He improved to 5-1 with his fourth straight complete-game victory.18 He ended the year at 26-20 with a league-leading 39 complete games in 43 starts as the ace for the Orioles, who finished fifth with a 68-65 record.

It is believed Plank pitched his debut strictly as a tryout; the Baltimore Sun reported that Mack said after the game he “intended” to sign Plank.19 Two days later, Plank started for Gettysburg College against Dickinson College, but had he signed a contract with the A’s to pitch against the Orioles, he would have lost his amateur status and been ineligible for that game.20

But after defeating Dickinson, Plank headed for Washington, D.C., to join the Athletics for good. On May 18 he started against the Senators and picked up the first of his 326 career victories, a record for left-handers until Warren Spahn eclipsed him on the last weekend of the 1962 season. Plank then lost a game but reeled off five straight victories, a streak punctuated by a shutout of the Milwaukee Brewers on June 13 – his first of 69, which ranked fourth when he retired.21

By the end of 1901, he had posted a 17-13 record with a 3.31 ERA and attained the fifth highest Wins Above Replacement value among AL pitchers (5.3).22 His efforts helped the A’s finish in the first division, taking fourth place with a 74-62 record, nine games behind the champion White Sox, a half-game behind the third-place Detroit Tigers, and 4½ games ahead of the Orioles.    

In 1902 Plank won 20 games for the first of eight times, and he later helped the A’s to World Series championships in 1911 and 1913.23 He jumped to the Federal League with the St. Louis Terriers in 1915 and then spent his final two seasons with the St. Louis Browns. Plank was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1946; as of 2025, he was the only Hall of Famer who made his major-league debut in 1901.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Eddie Plank, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, StatsCrew.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent statistics and the box scores. He also used information obtained from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Times, Philadelphia Record, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Morning Herald, Baltimore American, Sporting Life, and The Sporting News.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BLA/BLA190105130.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1901/B05130BLA1901.htm

Notes

1 Plank was offered a contract in 1900 by the Richmond Bluebirds of the Virginia League, but by the time the Gettysburg College season ended in June, the Bluebirds had disbanded.

2 Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 240.

3 Macht, 147.

4 The AL already directly competed against the NL in Chicago before 1901. Johnson later invaded St. Louis in 1902 and New York City in 1903 to compete against the NL’s Cardinals and Giants respectively.

5 “Those Athletics Pass It Up to M’Graw’s Bunch,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 14, 1901: 6.

6 Baker had also walked the bases loaded in the top of the first inning in his debut game, but he did not allow a run to score in that game. “A Regular Walkover for M’Graw’s Orioles,” Baltimore Morning Herald, May 14, 1901: 4.

7 McGraw scored four runs in the game. Due to illness, reportedly malaria, McGraw replaced himself in the bottom of the seventh inning with rookie George Rohe, who was making his second career appearance and played a role in his first double play. “A Regular Walkover for M’Graw’s Orioles.”

8 “The Birds Had All the Speed,” Baltimore American, May 14, 1901: 4.

9 Mack’s biggest signing was Lajoie, who had become one of baseball’s biggest stars by hitting .345 with 32 home runs for the Phillies from 1896 to 1900. A negative outcome in the court case could have been detrimental to the Athletics as Bill Bernhard, Chick Fraser, and Wiley Piatt, all also signed away from the Phillies, were Mack’s only proven pitchers. Phillies owner John I. Rogers filed suit and argued that the reserve clause found in standard NL contracts meant the four players belonged to his team, and he sought an injunction to force the players to only play for the Phillies in 1901. The courts ruled in favor of the Athletics, but appeals later forced the players off the Athletics roster in 1902, as well as two 1902 preseason signees from the Phillies, Elmer Flick and Bill Duggleby.

10 Loos started against the Boston Americans on May 2, 1901, but was pulled after one inning – the only major-league inning he ever pitched. Loos allowed five runs (three earned) on four walks and two hits in a 23-12 loss. Milligan made his major-league debut on April 30 and pitched all 10 innings of an 8-6 loss to Boston. He made five more appearances for the A’s, the final coming on July 1, and he later appeared in five games for the 1904 New York Giants.

11 The Cleveland Blues used a league-high 35 players in 1901, including 15 rookies. Among the 31 players Philadelphia used, 13 of them played in 10 or fewer games. For comparison, the Orioles used 23 players, including eight rookies.

12A contemporary report from the Philadelphia Inquirer describes an error by Keister, though modern box scores from Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference do not charge him with an error during this game. Errors in this game are charged to Baltimore’s third baseman John McGraw, second baseman Jimmy Williams, and right fielder Cy Seymour. “Those Athletics Pass It Up to M’Graw’s Bunch,”

13 “Won’t Get Pitcher Baker,” St. Joseph (Missouri) Gazette-Herald, May 8, 1901: 2; “Manager Mack Changes Team,” Philadelphia Times, May 15, 1901: 10.

14 Baker maintains the record as the only pitcher since 1901 to allow 23 singles in a game, which he did in his debut, and the 23 hits are second only to Allan Travers, who appeared in the majors as a replacement player during the Detroit Tigers’s one-game strike in 1912. Travers gave up 26 hits to the Athletics in his lone professional appearance. As of 2025, Baker’s WHIP is the ninth-worst among pitchers with at least 14  career innings pitched. Atop the list is Bruno Haas, who had a 3.558 WHIP in 14 1/3 innings for the 1915 Athletics.

15 Murphy had played since 1890 but had made only one appearance for the A’s, four days earlier. He eventually appeared in nine games throughout May for Philadelphia in 1901, his final year in the majors. In 11 years, he played in 568 games and appeared in four leagues – the Players’ League, the American Association, the National League, and the AL. He closed his career as a slightly-above-average catcher, recording a .936 fielding percentage (compared with a .931 league average over the same span), and he threw out 37.7 percent of would-be basestealers (exactly in line with the league average).

16 “A Regular Walkover for M’Graw’s Orioles.”

17 Lajoie’s eighth-inning single extended his hitting streak to 13 games, but by going 1-for-4, he saw his batting average dip from .633 to .604. His hitting streak ended after 16 games, and in 131 games throughout 1901, he went hitless only 17 times. Lajoie easily won the Triple Crown, leading the AL with a .426 average (Mike Donlin hit .340 to finish second), 14 home runs (Boston’s Buck Freeman was second with 12), and 125 RBIs (Freeman was second with 114).

18 McGinnity lived up to his “Iron Man” nickname – which derived from his offseason work at an iron foundry – leading the AL with 382 innings pitched. Don Doxsie, “Joe McGinnity,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/joe-mcginnity/. Accessed June 2025.

19 “Bad and Good Ball,” Baltimore Sun, May 14, 1901: 6.

20 “Dickinson Beaten in an Interesting Game,” Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Daily Herald, May 16, 1901: 1.

21 After retiring in 1917, Plank trailed Christy Mathewson (79), Cy Young (76), and Walter Johnson (71). As of 2025, Plank ranked fifth, having been passed by Grover Cleveland Alexander.

22 Ranking ahead of Plank were Boston’s Cy Young (12.4), Baltimore’s Joe McGinnity (8.1), Detroit’s Roscoe Miller (6.6), and Chicago’s Clark Griffith (5.7).

23 Philadelphia also won the World Series in 1910, but Plank did not pitch during the Series.