October 10, 1904: Rube Waddell salutes last-place Senators; Philadelphia’s Fred Applegate earns sole major-league win

Rube Waddell approached home plate as Patsy Donovan came to bat in the fourth inning. Donovan, Washington’s right fielder and manager, stepped backward; he had reason to be wary. The Philadelphia pitcher was pulling a bundle out from under his sweater. The 2,000 fans in Washington’s American League Park stirred, then, as Waddell spoke, went silent.

“You cannot refuse; ’tis the Stars and Stripes!” exclaimed Rube as he unwrapped a tattered American flag. “Pay homage to it, patriot! Keep it in remembrance of the team that won the cellar championship of the year 1904.”1 Donovan tipped his cap, accepted the flag, and – as the crowd cheered – took it to the Senators’ bench. It was the first game of a doubleheader, the final day of American League’s first 154-game season.

Last-place Washington had earned Waddell’s ragged flag. The Senators began the warm fall afternoon with a 37-112 record, 23½ games behind the seventh-place Detroit Tigers. Early in the year the franchise had become a ward of the league. Once the season was underway, its fledging ownership group sold the team’s few desirable high-salaried players. Donovan diligently worked with what he had but, beyond pitcher Casey Patten, first baseman Jake Stahl, and rookie shortstop Joe Cassidy, he didn’t have much.2

The visiting Athletics had stayed in a spirited five-team pennant race through most of the summer despite losing their promising outfielder Danny Hoffman (badly beaned on July 1) and struggling when left-handers Waddell and Eddie Plank weren’t in the box. Philadelphia eventually faded and, soon after beginning a season-concluding 27-game road trip in mid-September, fell completely out of the race. As they took the field on October 10, they were in fifth place, 12½ games off the pace.3

Still, there was enough of interest to attract a relatively large Monday crowd. The Senators had split Friday’s and Saturday’s doubleheaders with the Athletics. Second baseman George “Rabbit” Nill, purchased that summer from the Western League, promised a young middle-infield duo with Cassidy. Hoffman was back leading off for Philadelphia. And there was Waddell, the league’s reigning clown prince.

Most of all, there was the scoreboard, which was said to have perhaps attracted “fully one-half” of the fans to the park.4 A pennant was being decided at New York’s Hilltop Park. The Highlanders stood 1½ games behind the visiting Boston Americans, and needed to win both games of their season-ending doubleheader. Beginning with the 1905 World Series, newspapers in large cities began to erect large scoreboards outside their buildings and employed megaphone men to add additional detail and color.5 But no interleague championship loomed in 1904, and Washington fans lacked any significant public means beyond their park’s scoreboard to follow the New York action in real time.

Washington’s fans mostly pulled for Boston. A June trade that brought star left fielder Patsy Dougherty to New York from Boston, in exchange for utility player Bob Unglaub, was unpopular, as it was believed to be a scheme of AL President Ban Johnson to strengthen the Gotham franchise. Weeks later, in a move suspected to have been made to offset the Dougherty deal, one of Washington’s few stars, Kip Selbach, was sent to Boston in exchange for unproven John O’Neill.6

The New York doubleheader was just underway when Tom Hughes threw the first pitch of the Washington twin bill to Hoffman.7 Hughes, a 20-game winner with the World Series champion Americans in 1903, pitched unimpressively for the Highlanders to begin the 1904 campaign. Dealt to the Senators in July, he went 3-11 leading up to his final start of the season.

His counterpart, Fred Applegate, was purchased by Connie Mack that summer from Toronto and had joined the team in late September. In his subsequent first two major-league starts, both losses, the 25-year-old Applegate had offered little evidence that he could conquer the wildness that had so far plagued his pitching career.

Both pitchers avoided any troubles through the early innings. But in the top of the fourth, hits by Topsy Hartsel, Lave Cross, Socks Seybold, Pete Noonan, and Applegate, a hit batter, and two throwing errors by second baseman Nill pushed five Athletics runs across. On the bench, Waddell’s grin must have been apparent as he readied his gift for the next frame.

In the seventh, singles by Hoffman and Lou Bruce, another Nill error, a walk, and a sacrifice resulted in another two runs. Philadelphia led, 7-0. Yet the Senators, who had so far peppered Applegate’s crossfire delivery for six hits, began to cause damage. In the bottom of the seventh, a triple by Hughes brought home Cassidy and Donovan, Stahl’s single scored Hughes. In the eighth, Cassidy tripled and scored on a groundout.

Finally in the ninth, after O’Neill got an infield hit and Hunter Hill reached base on Hoffman’s fly-ball error, Stahl’s left-field drive brought both home and cut the score to 7-6. But Stahl was tagged out between second and third, and Applegate struck out Frank Huelsman and Nill to earn his first major-league victory.

It also proved to be his last. Applegate ignored the 1905 Athletics contract Mack sent him during the offseason, choosing instead to leverage offers from Toronto against those from an outlaw Williamsport, Pennsylvania, team.

As this lesser drama played out in the nation’s capital, its fans followed the battle in New York via the left-field scoreboard. The Highlanders scored two in the fifth, the Americans tied the match with a pair of runs in the seventh. The crowd saw a youth updating Boston’s top of the ninth with a “1.” Minutes later, a “0” for New York’s bottom of the ninth. Boston had clinched the pennant. Wild cheers erupted and bleacherites amused themselves by inciting “a couple of fake rows,” then leaving the “police hunting for the alleged trouble.”8

The Senators and Athletics had agreed to cap the second game at five innings. It lasted 50 minutes. Victimized by errors, Waddell suffered a 4-3 defeat. As their fans streamed to the exits, anxious to read the details of Boston’s pennant-clinching victory in the evening papers, the Senators could at least cap their woeful season with a faint last laugh.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information including the box score.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WS1/WS1190410101.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1904/B10101WS11904.htm

Photo credit: Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 “Season Closes with a Victory,” Washington Times, October 11, 1904: 8.

2 For Washington’s 1904 season, see Chuck Kimberly, The Days of Rube. Matty, Honus and Ty: Scenes from the Early Deadball Era, 1904-1907 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2019), 92-95.

3 For Philadelphia’s 1904 season, see Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 325-335.

4 “Senators Closed the Season with a Victory,” Washington Evening Star, October 11, 1904: 9.

5 On this evolution, see Phil Williams, “Megaphones in the Deadball Era,” The Inside Game: The Official Newsletter of SABR’s Deadball Era Committee, June 2018, tinyurl.com/2p9ftvh9.

6 For a Washington perspective on these sentiments, see John F. Luitich, “Traded to Boston,” The Sporting News, July 9, 1904: 3.

7 The advertised starting times were 1:30 in New York, 2:00 in Washington. [See the New York Sun, October 10, 1904: 6, and the Washington Post, October 10, 1904: 4.] With a considerably larger crowd at the former, perhaps its start was delayed. The Washington opener lasted 90 minutes, the New York opener 125 minutes. Its final score was therefore likely posted in American League Park soon after the first game there had finished.

8 “Closed with Victory,” Washington Post, October 11, 1904: 8.