May 26, 1893: A barrage of batting for McCarthy, Beaneaters

It had been a rough opening month for the defending National League champions. Although they never dipped more than two games below .500, they had not risen more than two games above .500 either. After a 7-5 loss on May 25 to the visiting Washington Senators, the Boston Beaneaters were lingering in fifth place in the NL, their record a mediocre 12-11.

For the second match of their series with Washington, Harry Staley was tagged to start for Boston. Thus far, the Beaneaters had relied mainly on a two-man rotation of Kid Nichols and Jack Stivetts, with Staley getting the call about every fourth or fifth game. A consistent, if unspectacular hurler, Staley was in his third season with Boston and had four consecutive 20-win seasons behind him.

The Washington club included a number of former Boston players, the most notable of whom was player-manager James “Orator” O’Rourke. At the age of 42, O’Rourke was not just the Senators’ manager but also a full-time player, splitting most of his time between left field and first base and appearing in 129 of the team’s 130 games. O’Rourke had played six seasons in Beantown, dating back to the days of the National Association’s Boston Red Stockings.1 The 1893 season was to be his final tour in the major leagues, but he was not there for merely sentimental reasons or in deference to his seniority: his 95-RBI total would top the Washington team.

O’Rourke called upon Al Maul to do the hurling duties. The 27-year-old Maul had performed in six prior major-league seasons, but had logged only one full year: 1890, when he pitched 31 games and went 16-12 for Pittsburgh of the Players’ League. By the end of the 1893 campaign, he would amass a career-high 297 innings. Maul began 1893 with three straight victories but was winless in his last four appearances.

The Spring skies were overcast in Boston but a barrage of batting fireworks soon lit up the South End Grounds. The home team claimed first at-bats and went right to work. Shortstop Herman Long led off with a hit and, after Cliff Carroll’s sacrifice, scored on a single by Hugh Duffy. Duffy tarried not long on the basepaths, as the next batter, Boston-bred Tommy McCarthy, hit a triple deep into left field. Team captain and third sacker Billy Nash plated McCarthy with a double and scored himself on Tommy Tucker’s bounding single.

Bobby Lowe’s fly to left was captured by O’Rourke for the second out, bringing to the plate third-string catcher Bill Merritt. The 22-year-old from the northern Massachusetts mill city of Lowell was enjoying his third start in four days. He had already displayed some heavy hitting in his limited playing time, notably a two-homer performance in the May 23 win over Philadelphia. From the eight spot in the lineup, with two outs and Tucker on first, Merritt launched a blast over the left-field fence. The Daily Advertiser reported, “The popular belief in the grandstand was that it fell down the smokestack of a passing locomotive.”2 With the Beaneaters holding a 6-0 lead, pitcher Staley completed the circuit of the batting order and ended the Boston half with a fly out to right.

The Washingtons did not wilt in the face of a six-run deficit. Leading off was right fielder Paul Radford. A Bay Stater by birth, the versatile and well-traveled Radford had begun his major-league career with the pennant-winning Beaneaters in 1883 and more recently had played on the American Association’s 1891 champion Boston Reds.3 He drew a base on balls from Staley, and took second on Dummy Hoy’s groundout. O’Rourke was up next and quickly cut the Boston lead to four with a home run to left. Sam Wise, a veteran of seven years in Boston uniforms dating back to 1882, followed with a strikeout. But then the floodgates opened, as Staley failed to retire any of the next six batters. Five singles and a walk produced another four Washington runs, tying the score at 6-6 before Hoy flied out to end the carnage.

Each team added a run in the second inning, the Beaneaters stringing together a single, a walk, and a fly out to produce theirs. The Senators’ resulted from two singles and an error,4 with outstanding catches by McCarthy in left and Carroll in right perhaps preventing greater damage.5 In the third, three singles, including one by Staley, gave Boston another run and an 8-7 lead.

Two scoreless half-innings ensued before the Senators renewed their abuse of Staley in the bottom of the fourth. Wise led off with a single, and was followed at bat by first baseman Henry Larkin. Now in his 10th and final season, Larkin was one of the most consistently heavy hitters in the majors, usually appearing among the leaders in doubles, triples, homers, and slugging percentage. With Wise waiting at first, Larkin showed off his power, knocking the ball over the left-field fence to give Washington a one-run edge.

Catcher Charley “Duke” Farrell was next up. Like Radford, he was a Bay State native and an alumnus of the 1891 AA Boston champs. Unlike Radford, Larkin, and O’Rourke, Farrell was nowhere near the end of his string; he would in fact play five years into the twentieth century. After wearing Staley down with a few fouls, including one that dropped embarrassingly between Nash and Merritt as they chased it down the third-base line, Farrell made it back-to-back round-trippers, putting the ball in almost the same spot as Larkin’s. Joe Mulvey then reached base with one of his four hits in the game. Another Boston-area native, rookie shortstop Joe Sullivan, made the first out of the inning, and Maul followed with the second. But Radford joined the home-run derby, driving the third four-bagger of the inning over the left-field fence. Hoy made the third out, but the Senators led 12-8.

Staley’s day was finished; Jack Stivetts assumed pitching duties in the fifth. Neither team scored in that inning, but the Beaneaters rallied in the sixth. O’Rourke replaced Maul with southpaw Duke Esper in that inning.6 Esper had made only four pitching starts but, like Maul, would eventually log a career-high innings-pitched total by the end of the season and, dubiously, would top the NL with 28 pitching losses.

Herman Long began the Boston attack with his fourth straight hit, and Carroll followed with a safety. Duffy then made the score 12-11 with a three-run blast that disappeared, like every one of the game’s five previous homers, somewhere over the left-field fence. Bases empty now, McCarthy doubled. Nash was put out on a close play at first, but the speedy Little Mac managed to score from second on the play, and the game was tied.

Washington got a single off Stivetts in the bottom of the sixth, but that was all. The home team took the lead in the seventh when, with two outs, Duffy drew a walk from Esper, took second on a passed ball, and scored on McCarthy’s third hit of the day.

From the bottom of the seventh through the top of the ninth, Stivetts and Esper held their respective lines. In the ninth the Senators threatened. Leadoff batter Mulvey doubled deep to left. Tim Murnane in the Globe wrote, “Six inches more and the ball was over.”7 After an out, Esper bid fair to help his own cause with a single that advanced Mulvey to third. Top of the order, Radford up, already with two hits. He got hold of a Stivetts pitch and lined it into center. But Duffy had no problem snaring it and, with Mulvey tagging from third, sent a bullet toward the plate, where catcher Merritt stood waiting. Duffy’s throw was true, Merritt’s tag on Mulvey made it a double play, and the Beaneaters escaped with a 13-12 win.

The audience of 2,0008 had witnessed quite a slugfest, the two teams producing 36 hits and an amazing (for the era) six home runs.9 A note in the Globe’s summary asserted, “While the crowd enjoyed the hitting, the game was too long.”10 The official game time was recorded as 2 hours 20 minutes.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org. and the following:

Nemec, David. Major League Baseball Profiles: 1871-1900, Volumes 1 & 2 (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, 2011).

______________. The Great Encyclopedia of 19th-Century Major League Baseball (New York: Donald I. Fine Books, 1997).

Notes

1 At least one source gives him another nickname, “Judge.” “Fusilade of Hits,” Boston Daily Advertiser, May 27, 1893: 2.

2 “Fusilade of Hits.”

3 Radford logged 900 games as an outfielder, nearly 500 at various infield positions, and even a handful as pitcher, while serving on nine teams in 12 years.

4 The Boston Globe credited Washington with three singles, but the Advertiser attributed the run to a McCarthy “fumble.”

5 Tim Murnane called McCarthy’s “one of the greatest catches ever seen at the grounds … equalling the best work of the never-to-be-forgotten Andy Leonard.” “Boston’s Day,” Boston Globe, May 27, 1893: 6.

6 The Globe reported that Esper entered the game in the seventh inning, while both the Daily Advertiser and the Boston Journal had him in the box for the sixth. Since two box scores show Esper with two at-bats in the game and the second of those was definitely in the ninth, the first must have been in the Washington sixth. As the Senators’ half of the sixth followed the Beaneaters’ half and as Esper most likely entered as the pitcher before going to bat; the accounts of the Advertiser and Journal appear correct on this point.

7 “Boston’s Day.”

8 This figure is per the Advertiser’s report; the Springfield Republican of May 27 put it at 1,750.

9 The box scores in both the Washington Post and the Washington Evening Star of May 27, 1893, claimed there were seven homers, attributing one to Tommy Tucker, but no other reports bear this out. A contributing factor to the general home-run explosion was, of course, the increase in pitching distance that went into effect in 1893. Previously, the pitcher worked from a box whose front boundary was 50 feet from the center of home plate; beginning in 1893, the box was replaced by a rubber slab planted 60 feet 6 inches from home. The pitcher being required to keep one foot on the rubber was another boon to batters. Murnane wrote, “Capt. O’Rourke claims that it is not the five-foot extra that is making the heavy batting, but the fact that the pitcher is confined to the one-foot rubber plate.” (“Boston’s Day.”)

10 “Boston’s Day.”