May 30, 1908: Boston’s Cy Young almost perfect on Memorial Day, one-hits Washington Nationals

In 1908, at age 41, Cy Young was pitching about as well as ever.1 This marked his eighth season with Boston’s American League team, now known for the first time as the Red Sox. Young joined Boston in 1901, at age 34, when the AL assumed major-league status, and he brought with him 286 National League wins accumulated between 1890 and 1900. The presence of Young in Boston and Nap Lajoie in Cleveland gave the fledgling AL credibility it needed.

Young treated Boston fans to two 30-win seasons (1901, ’02), and three 20-win campaigns (1903, ’04, ’07). He added two wins over Pittsburgh in the inaugural American League-National League World Series of 1903.2

Young, who pitched his first no-hitter in 1897 as a member of the NL’s Cleveland Spiders, pitched a perfect game in 1904, a year in which he issued just 29 walks in 380 innings. It was the first perfect game after adoption of 60 feet 6 inches as the standard pitching distance in 1893, and it was the first perfect game of the twentieth century. As of Memorial Day 1908, it was still the most recent perfect game.3

Many claimed Young’s skills had slipped when he posted losing records in 1905 (18-19) and 1906 (13-21),4 but the famed pitcher bounced back to go 20-15 in 1907.

Young began 1908 by beating the New York Highlanders, 3-1, on Opening Day. He won his first four starts, including a four-hit shutout of Washington on April 24, only to lose his next four. Young’s skid came to a halt on May 25 when he beat the St. Louis Browns, 4-2, on six hits. It was his eighth complete game in nine starts.

On Memorial Day, May 30, Boston manager Deacon McGuire sent Young (5-4) to the mound for the early game of a “forenoon-afternoon” doubleheader in hopes of breaking the team’s current three-game losing streak, which included dropping both games of a doubleheader to the Nationals one day earlier. Boston had begun a long homestand at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds on May 6, but did not take advantage of it. They were 7-12 on their homestand and, with an overall record of 14-23, occupied last place in the AL standings.

Young was opposed on the mound by 28-year-old rookie Bill Burns (4-3), a 6-foot-2 left-handed Texan. Washington drafted him from Los Angeles of the Pacific Coast League on the strength of his 24-17 record in 1907. Burns’ two most recent starts had been against the reigning AL champion Detroit Tigers. He split a pair of 1-0 contests, allowing the Tigers a total of just five hits in the two outings. He was starting to make quite a reputation.5

Young began what became a familiar pattern when he retired the Nationals one-two-three to start the game. In contrast, Burns struggled in the first. With one out, Harry Lord got the first of his four hits; he was forced at second by Amby McConnell. Gavy Cravath then hit a shot right down the first-base line. Washington first baseman Jerry Freeman got his glove on the ball, but could not stop it from rolling into the outfield. McConnell raced all the way home for the game’s first run.

Neither team scored in the second; Young again retired all three Nationals who came to the plate, although he needed some defensive help.  Dave Altizer made a bid for a long hit; right fielder Doc Gessler chased it down and made a wonderful catch,6 losing his cap along the way.7  

Boston put up two more runs in the third. Lord and McConnell singled and were sacrificed to second and third by Cravath. Burns fielded a ball in front of the plate off the bat of Gessler8 but threw home too late to get Lord, as McConnell sprinted to third. With runners at the corners, Gessler dashed for second, drawing a wild throw from catcher Gabby Street. McConnell hurried home on the error, making it 3-0.

At the end of the third, Burns was relieved by another left-hander, Casey Patten, a 34-year-old veteran pitching in his final major-league season.9 Burns’ pitching line included three runs, six hits, one walk, and a hit batsman over three innings. T.H. Murnane, a Boston Globe writer, delighted in the early exit of Burns, who had been “touted as a wonder.”10

Young buzzed through the Nationals in the fourth and fifth, running his streak of consecutive outs to 15. As the Boston Herald put it, “His terrific speed completely nonplussed the Washingtons.”11

The Red Sox added to their lead in the fifth. Bob Unglaub singled and stole second. Patten fielded Heinie Wagner’s grounder, but threw wildly past first base, allowing Unglaub to score. Boston was now on top 4-0 in what was becoming a one-sided affair.

Freeman was the first batter to face Young in the top of the sixth. A rookie at age 28, Freeman spent 1907 in the American Association with the Minneapolis Millers, where he hit an even .300. The Nationals installed Freeman at first base on Opening Day and he remained there, starting every game.12

Freeman entered the contest batting .225, and he struck out in the third inning. Nevertheless, he had reason for confidence against the great pitcher. On April 24, his most recent look at Young, Freeman registered one of the Nationals’ four hits.

This time Freeman connected with one of Young’s offerings and drove it past second base and into center field for a clean single. Center fielder Jack Thoney “made a bungling effort and overran the ball.”13 Thoney’s error gave Freeman the green light to sprint to second.

Washington had life, but not for long. Once more, good defense supported Young. After an out, Lord made what the Boston Herald called a “left-handed stop of Patten’s grounder,” throwing him out on “a hair-raising play.”14 Freeman made it to third base but was stranded there.

In the bottom of the inning, Boston added its final runs. Thoney singled and Lord slapped his fourth single. McConnell reached first when Thoney was thrown out trying to score on his grounder. Cravath hit a flare to short center field; Clyde Milan made an all-out effort to catch the ball, but could not. Cravath ended up on second with a double, and both Lord and McConnell scored, making it 6-0. It was McConell’s third run of the game.

Young continued his magnificent pitching through the seventh, eighth, and ninth. The Boston crowd showered him with a continual round of ovations.15 Freeman came to bat with two out in the eighth, but this time Young got the upper hand, striking him out for the second time.

In the ninth  George McBride flied out. Veteran Ollie Pickering, Young’s teammate on the 1897 Spiders, pinch-hit for Patten and struck out. Milan, Washington’s final hope, nursed the count to 3-and-1 before Young cut the plate with his next two pitches, and Milan too went down on strikes.16

Young was in top form. He retired the first 15 Nationals who came to the plate, gave up Freeman’s single, and then retired 12 more. This one-hitter, in which he faced just 28 batters, was the first of two games he tossed in 1908 that approached perfection.

The Boston Journal captured the sentiments of many: “Who said Cy Young was a dead one? The old reliable Denton T. was there with the goods on Saturday morning, and had not Jerry Freeman swatted one to center in the sixth period it would have been another of those no-hit no-run no-first base games. Cy’s speed was wonderful to watch and his control perfect.”17

The Nationals started the day with a five-game winning streak, and having swept a doubleheader one day earlier were poised to take two more on Memorial Day; “but the grand old man of baseball brought them to a standstill,”18 concluded the Washington Herald. The Nationals did take the afternoon game, 7-4.

Young continued pitching well in June, chalking up five wins, as the Red Sox climbed out of the cellar and into sixth place. On June 30, facing the Highlanders at Hilltop Park in New York, Young faced the minimum 27 batters, but missed perfection; a walk to New York’s first hitter spoiled the day.19 Young retired the next 26 batters – falling short of a second perfect game, but notching his third career no-hitter.

By the end of 1908 Young had registered the lowest ERA of his long career at 1.26, and posted a 21-11 record, his 16th season of at least 20 wins.

Acknowledgments

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

Photo credit: Cy Young, 1908: SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent statistical information. The author relied on game coverage in the Washington Herald, Boston Herald, and Boston Globe, and reviewed SABR BioProject biographies for several players participating in the game, and Game Stories linked above.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS190805301.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1908/B05301BOS1908.htm

Notes

1 WAR is a twenty-first-century metric for determining a player’s performance. Young’s 1908 Baseball-Reference Wins Above Replacement (bWAR), determined retroactively, is 9.4. It was his best bWAR since 1902, and ranked eighth among his 22 seasons.

2 Young lost Game One but won Games Five and Seven as Boston took home the first World Series championship, five games to three.

3 In the waning days of the season Addie Joss of the Cleveland Naps threw a perfect game.

4 Young finished third in the league in ERA in 1905 pitching on a Boston team offering little offensive support, but ERA was not an official statistic until adopted by the NL in 1912. The average fan would have looked at Young’s won-lost record to determine how well he was performing.

5 “Boston Takes One Then Is Defeated,” Boston Herald, May 31, 1908: 12.

6 T.H. Murnane, “Echoes of the Games,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1908: 13.

7 Murnane.

8 “Boston Takes One Then Is Defeated.” The Boston Herald reported that Gessler hit a “scratch” that Burns fielded but threw to the plate “just too late.” The Washington Herald said Gessler bunted in front of the plate to score Lord, and did not mention the throw by Burns.

9 Patten joined the Red Sox on May 31 after a trade, and pitched just once for Boston.

10 Murnane.

11 “Boston Takes One Then Is Defeated.”

12 By the end of the year Freeman had appeared in 154 of Washington’s 155 games.

13 “Boston Takes One Then Is Defeated.”

14 “Boston Takes One Then Is Defeated.” I am not sure what a “left-handed stop” means, but it may have been what today we would call “a back-handed stop,” or perhaps the writer meant Lord went far to his left to stop the ball.

15 “Boston Takes One Then Is Defeated.”

16 “Only One Hit Off ‘Cy’ Young,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1908: 13.

17 Bob Dunbar, “Bob Dunbar’s Sporting Chat,” Boston Journal, June 1, 1908: 9. Bob Dunbar was not a real person. “Dunbar was a fictitious name. Articles in the column ‘Sporting Comment’ with his byline were ghostwritten by anonymous writers.” Ty Waterman and Mel Springer, The Year the Red Sox Won the Series (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999), 278.

18 “Nationals Split with the Red Sox,” Washington Herald, May 31, 1908: 29.

19 “Made ’Em All Take Notice,” Boston Globe, July 1, 1908: 4.