May 16, 1934: Retired Walter Johnson treats fans, pitches in Indians exhibition vs. Cornell

Buried in Cornell University’s baseball media guide, in the list of the Big Red’s all-time records against non-NCAA and defunct opponents, is a line indicating that the Ivy League school far above Cayuga’s waters has a 0-1-0 record against the Cleveland Indians.1

Behind that line is a story involving one of baseball’s most revered pitchers. The Indians came to Cornell for an exhibition on May 16, 1934, and their manager, 46-year-old Walter Johnson, gave himself the start. It was seven seasons after the end of Johnson’s playing career with the Washington Nationals, in which he won 417 games, two Most Valuable Player Awards, three pitching Triple Crowns, and five ERA titles, also setting a big-league record with 3,509 strikeouts.2 He wasn’t a Hall of Famer in 1934 because the Hall of Fame didn’t exist yet, but when it opened two years later, Johnson was one of its first five inductees.3

At Cornell, Johnson was less than the commanding “Big Train” of his glory days, or perhaps he was going easy on the collegians. He allowed nine hits and four runs in five innings of work, striking out only one batter. The Indians cruised to an 11-4 win anyway, led by a long home run by Glenn Myatt.

Johnson’s plan to pitch was announced in advance, and the chance to see a legend drew about 4,000 fans to Cornell’s Hoy Field, a turnout comparable to many crowds the Indians had drawn in major-league cities that season.4 It was the first recorded visit to the college by a major-league team.5 Johnson’s Nationals had played the Big Red in an exhibition on April 6, 1912, but that game took place in Washington, and Johnson did not play.6

Johnson had made a few pitching appearances in retirement before coming to Ithaca. Near the end of his four-season stint as manager of the Nationals, he pitched an exhibition in Youngstown, Ohio, in August 1932.7 Taking over as Indians manager for the 1933 season, he pitched in Zanesville, Ohio, that August.8 Later, he pitched against Michigan State’s team in June 1934 and made several brief appearances during World War II in exhibitions that raised money for the war effort.9

The Indians had wrapped up a weather-troubled East Coast swing in New York City and stopped in Ithaca on their way home to Cleveland.10 Their 11-9 record in early going was second in the American League, which put them behind the New York Yankees by 4½ games.

Besides Johnson, the Indians’ biggest gate attractions included outfielders Earl Averill and Joe Vosmik. Averill, a few days shy of his 32nd birthday, had hit .300 or better in five straight seasons; he compiled a .318 average across 13 seasons and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1975. Vosmik, 24, ranked among league leaders in hits, RBIs, batting average, and slugging average as of May 15.11

The team’s front office had close ties to Cornell. Brothers Alva (Class of 1905) and C.F. (Class of 1908) Bradley owned a controlling interest in the Indians. General manager Billy Evans, a former big-league umpire, was also a 1905 graduate who’d played freshman baseball at Cornell before suffering a knee injury.12

And what of their opponents – nicknamed “the Eckleymen” in tribute to 10th-year head coach Paul Eckley?13 The Cornellians were in the midst of a relatively undistinguished spell, as they failed to post a winning record between 1928 and 1939. Back-to-back .500 seasons in 1933 (8-8) and 1934 (11-11) were the highlights of this period.14 In conference play in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League, Cornell went 7-5 in 1934, ranking second behind Columbia University’s 8-4 record.15

None of the 16 players who appeared against the Indians reached the major leagues, though center fielder Ernie Downer later played briefly in the minors.16 Cornell’s starting pitcher was Phil Pross, who went on to become a surgeon; he worked four innings and surrendered five runs.17 Pross was succeeded by Pat Hartnett (three innings, five runs) and Dan Lindheimer (two innings, one run.)

Cleveland opened the scoring with two runs in the first, starting with a single by another future Hall of Famer, Sam Rice.18 Bill Knickerbocker walked and Dutch Holland beat shortstop Gordie Miscall’s throw to first, loading the bases. Hal Trosky hit into a force at second base to score the first run, and a single by Odell Hale scored the second.19

Johnson “did not attempt to pitch anything but a straight ball,” the Ithaca Journal reported, and Cornell solved him for a run with two out in the first. Left fielder Bill Dugan doubled and Downer, only a sophomore, tripled.20

Cleveland’s famous pitcher had considered leaving the game after one inning, worried about his stamina.21 But Johnson felt good enough to stay in, and he helped his team widen its lead in the second. With one away, Myatt singled to right and Johnson singled into left-center field. The 44-year-old Rice brought Myatt home with another single to right, and Holland laced a triple that made the score 5-1, Indians.

The unintimidated Eckleymen fought back with runs in the third and fourth. Second baseman Bob Frost led off the third with what the Journal called a “stinging double to right field” and scored on Dugan’s single to left. In the third, team captain Toots Pasto, usually one of Cornell’s starting pitchers, pinch-hit for Pross and scored first baseman Jack Draney with a single.22 Cleveland led 5-3.

The Indians pulled away for good in the fifth with Hartnett on the mound. Hale doubled to left, and Ralph Winegarner drove him in with a triple to right.23 Myatt followed with a deep home run to right field to make the score 8-3. Reportedly, it was only the third home run to clear the right-field fence in the park’s 13-season history, and the first since Lou Gehrig—then playing for Columbia University—did it more than a decade earlier.24

That same inning, Holland sent a deep drive to left field that had the look of an extra-base hit, but the Cornell Daily Sun reported: “In those far reaches, Bill Dugan was waiting, and climbing the grass bank he mitted the most spectacular ball of the day.”25

The Eckleymen touched Johnson for one more run in the fifth on a long double by replacement second baseman Jack Kreimer and, a few batters later, a sacrifice fly by right fielder Al Froehlich. Right-hander Belve Bean, who’d appeared in only three of the Indians’ first 20 regular-season games, replaced Johnson for the sixth and worked the final four innings, blanking the collegians on two hits.26

Two runs in the sixth and another in the ninth widened the final margin to 11-4, Indians. The last run scored when the ageless Rice, 3-for-6 on the day, crossed the plate on Knickerbocker’s double. But the Big Red were still capable of doing themselves proud: In that same inning, Downer tracked down and caught Hale’s fly to deep center.

Cornell’s campus newspaper praised the collegians for a “creditable performance” and said both sides had enjoyed the exhibition: “Both teams evidenced a great deal of enjoyment and seemed to appreciate the novelty of a game with such unusual opponents.”27

“Johnson received credit for his first 1934 victory and will bear watching,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported dryly.28 When not pitching, Johnson visited a fan in a local sanitarium, met a woman who had attended at his birth, and signed numerous autographs. “If Johnson has a sore arm today, it’s from writing his name, not from pitching five innings against the Cornellians,” the Ithaca Journal wrote.29 The pitching legend, making his first visit to the area, also spoke positively about the attractiveness of the campus and the surrounding region.30

The Indians closed the season at 85-69, in third place, 16 games behind the AL champion Detroit Tigers and nine behind the Yankees. They were in fifth place on August 4, 1935, when Johnson resigned; he never managed again.31 

Hoy Field hosted only one more major-league exhibition. On May 2, 1935, the St. Louis Cardinals rolled over the Big Red, 11-3, in a game that ended after eight innings when children in the crowd stormed the field.32 After a century of action, Hoy Field was replaced by a new ballpark, Booth Field, in 2023.33

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Carl Reichers and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Sources and photo credit

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.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of exhibition games, but the Ithaca (New York) Journal and Cleveland Plain Dealer published box scores in their editions of May 17, 1934.

Image of unnumbered 1934 Butterfinger Premiums card of Walter Johnson downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 2008 Cornell Big Red baseball media guide: 28, accessed September 2025, https://cornellbigred.com/documents/2008/2/28/08BSBMG_24-29.pdf. “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters” is the name of Cornell’s alma mater song, inspired by the school’s location near Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of central New York state.

2 As of September 2025, the major leagues’ all-time strikeout leader was Nolan Ryan, with 5,714. Johnson ranked 10th on the list, with the still-active Max Scherzer not far behind.

3 The others: Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner.

4 “Walter Johnson to Go On Mound in Indians’ Game with Red Nine,” Cornell Daily Sun (Ithaca, New York), May 11, 1934: 1; “Cleveland Indians Down Red Nine 11-4, Before 4,000 On Hoy Field,” Cornell Daily Sun, May 17, 1934: 1. The Cornell paper and the Cleveland Plain Dealer both gave the crowd size as 4,000; the Ithaca (New York) Journal gave a slightly smaller figure of 3,500. Entering the exhibition at Cornell, the Indians had played 20 regular-season games in 1934. According to Retrosheet records in September 2025, nine of those games had listed attendances of 4,000 or fewer, while the crowd sizes of four others were not recorded.

5 Based on the list of in-season exhibitions collected by SABR member Walter LeConte and cited below, as well as the 2008 Cornell Big Red baseball media guide: 28. The media guide lists Cornell as playing “Detroit” (and winning) in 1921, but that game was against the University of Detroit, not the Tigers. (“Single Inning Downs U. of D.,” Detroit Free Press, May 8, 1921: 21.) The Cornell team also played the New York Giants in March 1905 during a southern trip. “Successful Baseball Trip,” Cornell Daily Sun, April 4, 1905: 1.

6 “Senator,” “Cunningham’s Rap Awakens the Fans,” Washington (District of Columbia) Times, April 7, 1912: 16.

7 Associated Press, “Walter Johnson Hurls Exhibition,” Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder, August 12, 1932: 10.

8 “Indians Prove Duck-Soup for Milnar Who Fans 18,” Zanesville (Ohio) Signal, August 31, 1933: 12. This list of Johnson’s pitching appearances in post-retirement exhibitions is based on the list of in-season exhibitions compiled by Walter LeConte and other SABR members, posted to Retrosheet, “A Listing of In-Season Exhibition Games, https://www.retrosheet.org/InSeasonExhibitionGames1921-2012.htm, accessed in September 2025. The author checked the list for Nationals and Indians games during Johnson’s managing career and cross-checked news accounts to identify games in which Johnson pitched.

9 Associated Press, “Old Walt Johnson Handles Spartans,” Saginaw (Michigan) Daily News, June 5, 1934: 11; Charles Carey, “Walter Johnson,” SABR Biography Project, accessed September 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/walter-johnson/.

10 The Indians-Yankees games of May 14 and 15 were both postponed for wet weather; the teams completed only one game of their scheduled three-game series, on May 13. The May 14 game was rescheduled for June 20, while the May 15 game was not played until August 22.

11 Not mentioned in Cornell Daily Sun preview stories was 21-year-old first baseman Hal Trosky, whose .270 on-base percentage as of May 15 ranked him among the league’s weakest hitters. Trosky got on track soon afterward and finished his rookie season hitting .330 with 35 home runs and 142 RBIs, leading the Indians in all three categories.

12 “Alva Bradley ‘05 Will Bring 18 of His Indians Tomorrow,” Cornell Daily Sun, May 15, 1934: 1. Alva Bradley also had a son in the Cornell Class of 1935, as reported in “Walter Johnson to Go On Mound in Indians’ Game with Red Nine.”

13 Eckley, a former football and baseball player at Cornell, later taught and coached for many years at Amherst College. He died in December 1978 at age 83. Kenny Van Sickle, “Sport Tower,” Ithaca Journal, December 7, 1978: 19.

14 2008 Cornell Big Red baseball media guide: 24 and 27. Eckley’s lifetime record in 12 seasons as Cornell baseball coach between 1925 and 1936 was 87-144-3.

15 “Cornell Nine Second in Intercollegiate Baseball Standings,” Ithaca (New York) Journal, June 26, 1934: 12. Other Ivy League schools made up the remainder of the conference.

16 As of September 2025, Baseball-Reference’s page on Cornell University did not indicate that any 1934 Big Red players had appeared professionally. The author used first names from 1934 game coverage in the Ithaca Journal to crosscheck Cornell players’ names in Baseball-Reference.

17 “Dr. Philip Pross” (obituary), North Jersey Herald & News (Passaic, New Jersey), July 11, 1991: B4.

18 Rice had played parts of 19 seasons with the Nationals before coming to Cleveland for one final season. He’d been Johnson’s teammate on Washington’s World Series championship team of 1924, as well as the American League champions of 1925.

19 Unless otherwise noted, all play-by-play action is based on “Cleveland Indians Take Cornell’s Measure, 11 to 4,” Ithaca Journal, May 17, 1934: 18. Although this story is the most thorough recounting of game action, it is confused about the first run. The story has Trosky bouncing into a force play at second with the bases loaded and none out, but does not credit him with driving in the run that would have had to have scored on the play. Instead, it credits both runs to Hale’s single. The accompanying box score credits Trosky and Hale with one RBI apiece, and this account sides with the box score.

20 “Cleveland Indians Take Cornell’s Measure, 11 to 4.”

21 “Johnson Hurls, Beats Cornell,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 17, 1934: 18.

22 “Cornell Nine Second in Intercollegiate Baseball Standings”; “Cleveland Indians Take Cornell’s Measure, 11 to 4.” The Ithaca Journal said Draney reached second base “as the result of a hit over second,” but the box score does not credit Draney with a double. Two batters came to the plate between Draney and Pasto, and it seems likely that Draney singled and one of the following batters did something to advance him. (Draney is also not credited with a stolen base.)

23 Winegarner, typically a pitcher, was playing right field. In 136 big-league games, Winegarner appeared as a pitcher 70 times. He also played one game at first base, eight at third base, five in the outfield, and 63 as a pinch-hitter. His career batting average was .276.

24 “Cleveland Indians Take Cornell’s Measure, 11 to 4”; “Johnson Hurls, Beats Cornell”; “Cleveland Indians Down Red Nine 11-4, Before 4,000 On Hoy Field.” Various accounts say the right-field fence at Hoy Field was only 300 feet away, but a high fence was in place. Kenneth Van Sickle, “The Sport Tower,” Ithaca Journal, April 21, 1936: 10; Kenny Van Sickle, “The Sport Tower,” Ithaca Journal, May 2, 1938: 8; Jeff Stein, “Trying To Measure Lou Gehrig’s Massive Home Run at Cornell, 92 Years Later,” Ithaca (New York) Voice, March 3, 2015, https://ithacavoice.org/2015/03/trying-measure-lou-gehrigs-massive-home-run-cornell-92-years-later/.

25 “Cleveland Indians Down Red Nine 11-4, Before 4,000 On Hoy Field.”

26 Bean had no record and a 4.50 ERA in his three appearances, all mop-up roles in games the Indians were losing. He hadn’t pitched since May 7 and did not appear again in regular-season play until May 27.

27 “Cleveland Indians Down Red Nine 11-4, Before 4,000 On Hoy Field.”

28 “Johnson Hurls, Beats Cornell.”

29 “Johnson Pays Visit to Gil McGraw Here,” Ithaca Journal, May 17, 1934: 18. Johnson was not an Ithaca native; he was born in Humboldt, Kansas. The woman he met with had moved from Kansas to central New York.

30 “Walter Johnson Praises Cornell Ball Field, Local Scenery,” Cornell Daily Sun, May 17, 1934: 1.

31 Associated Press, “Walter Johnson Quits Cleveland Club,” Fresno (California) Bee, August 5, 1935: 2B. Johnson retired with a 529-432 (.550) record as a major-league manager.

32 “Rain, Cold Defied by 3,000 to See Cards Play Red,” Ithaca Journal, May 3, 1935: 16. The 2008 Cornell University baseball media guide does not list any major-league opponents for the Big Red after the Cardinals in 1935.

33 Corey Ryan Earle, “After a Century on Hoy Field, Baseball Slides Into a New Home,” Cornell University alumni website, June 18, 2024; https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/baseball-history/.