October 2, 1930: George Earnshaw quiets the Cardinals in Game 2

These St. Louis Cardinals were a gang of swaggering roughnecks who deferred to no one, not even the defending world champions. Their preening and trash-talking started even before the World Series began and continued during and after their 5-2 loss in the opener. In Game Two Philadelphia turned to a tall, well-bred gentleman from the leafy New York suburbs to shut them up.

Manager Gabby Street’s Redbirds were so unfazed following their Game One defeat that it was almost obnoxious. They couldn’t come through with the big hit against the great Lefty Grove, but that didn’t shake their confidence one bit. “We thought we were the better club and now we know it,” insisted Street.1 “They used their best and perhaps their one good pitcher and they had to have all the breaks to win.”2 Many managers may feel that way after a loss but few are bold enough to say it, and the Athletics took notice.

There was a sliver of truth in his comments, though. Outside of Grove, the Athletics had no great pitchers, just a stable of solid, steady workhorses. One of them was literate Swarthmore College product George Earnshaw, the Game Two starter, fresh off his second consecutive 20-win season.

Opposing him was Flint Rhem, who earned headlines three weeks earlier when he went AWOL from the team, and then swore with a straight face he been taken hostage by armed bandits who forced him to consume large quantities of alcohol. No one believed him. After all, persuading Rhem to drink did not typically require kidnapping, guns, or any form of persuasion at all, really. But although he may have been a bad liar, Rhem was a fine pitcher who went 12-8 in 1930 and had won 20 games for the Cardinals during their World Series run in 1926.

It was a sunny, breezy afternoon and quite chilly, albeit slightly warmer than the previous day, when the weather forced fans to break out their overcoats. A sellout crowd of 32,295 packed Shibe Park, with perhaps another 2,000 fans watching from the rooftops beyond right field.3

Earnshaw retired the first two batters of the game before Frankie Frisch laced a double down the left-field line. It was Frisch’s 43rd hit in World Series competition, breaking a record set by the White Sox’ Eddie Collins in 1919. The Cardinals stranded him at second when Jim Bottomley flied out to center.

Rhem had nothing and was fooling no one, and that became apparent right away. Max Bishop led off the bottom of the first with a fly ball that Taylor Douthit tracked down in deep right-center. Third baseman Sparky Adams then made a brilliant play to retire Jimmy Dykes on a sharply hit grounder that was headed down the line. At that point the miracles ceased.

The Cardinals’ plan was to work over Philadelphia’s most dangerous hitters with breaking pitches low in the strike zone.4 Rhem didn’t follow that script with Mickey Cochrane, although it isn’t clear exactly what he did. The Washington Post’s Shirley Povich described the 2-and-2 pitch to Cochrane as a fastball off the end of the bat. J. Roy Stockton of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch saw it as a curveball in on the handle. But regardless of where the pitch was, or what it was, it ended up out on 20th Street beyond the right-field wall, Cochrane’s second home run in as many days. After Al Simmons followed with a single, Jimmie Foxx scorched a double to left-center field, which scored a sliding Simmons ahead of the throw and gave Philadelphia a 2-0 lead.

With one out in the second, Cardinals rookie George Watkins cut the margin in half with a solo shot of his own. Next, Gus Mancuso reached on an infield single and Charlie Gelbert followed with a bad-hop base hit that shot over the head of second baseman Bishop, sending Mancuso to third. “That’s the first break the Cardinals have had in the Series,” mused one writer to his colleagues in the press box.5 But Earnshaw escaped trouble by striking out Rhem and setting down Douthit on a little looper to Bishop. St. Louis barely laid a hand on Earnshaw the rest of the afternoon.

The A’s opened up on Rhem again in the third. He retired the first two men easily but then second baseman Frisch misplayed a routine grounder from Cochrane, which proved to be Rhem’s undoing. Simmons followed with a laser to right field. Watkins broke late and tried for a shoestring catch but the ball skipped past him and rolled to the wall. Cochrane came home and Simmons ended up with a double.

Rhem fell behind on the next hitter, Foxx, three balls and no strikes, before dropping in a curve for a 3-and-1 count. Surprisingly, this is when Street decided to order an intentional walk. Rhem shook his head and stomped around the mound, but complied. Bing Miller hammered the next pitch into left field for a single. Rhem, sensing that Chick Hafey’s throw to the plate would be late, tried to cut it off but the ball caromed off his glove and toward the backstop. Simmons scored to make it 4-1, and the runners moved up to second and third on Rhem’s error. The Cardinals avoided further damage when Mule Haas lined out sharply to Douthit.

Philadelphia finally pummeled the beleaguered Rhem into submission in the fourth. Joe Boley opened with a single off shortstop Gelbert’s glove. After Earnshaw struck out, Bishop coaxed a four-pitch walk – one of seven bases on balls he drew in the series. Then Dykes, one of the hitting stars of the 1929 World Series, blasted a double to deep center field, scoring Boley and Bishop, making it 6-1, and ending the day for Rhem.

The rest of the afternoon was almost entirely uneventful. The crowd “found it difficult to stifle a yawn,” quipped John Drebinger in the New York Times.6 Earnshaw allowed just two hits over the final seven innings. Jim Lindsey and Syl Johnson were no less impressive for the Cardinals, combining for 4⅔ innings of no-hit relief. One of the few remaining lively moments came during the seventh-inning stretch when a band taunted the Cardinals and tickled the fans with an appropriately anguished version of “The St. Louis Blues.”

Athletics manager Connie Mack had relief pitchers warming briefly on a couple of occasions, once in the seventh after a leadoff walk and again in the eighth after a leadoff single, but Earnshaw smothered those threats effortlessly. In the ninth he checkmated the Cardinals by retiring Hafey on a grounder and then striking out Watkins and Mancuso. Earnshaw took the ball from his catcher, Cochrane, leaped over the foul line, and bounded into the dugout, a brilliant day of work behind him. He scattered six hits, walked one, and fanned eight.

Dykes couldn’t resist getting in a shot at the Cardinals after the game. “They can’t complain about the breaks beating them today,” he crowed. “I don’t think the Cardinals would have scored another run off Earnshaw if the game would have lasted 24 hours.”7 Mack was more diplomatic, but echoed the general point. “He [was] fast and his control was good. And when Earnshaw is in that mood, he’s just about unbeatable.”8 He was unbeatable for the rest of the Series, too, surrendering only two runs in 25 innings over three starts.

Sid Keener, the sports editor of the St. Louis Star, was among those who were critical of Street’s decision-making in Game Two. He wondered why the St. Louis manager didn’t lift Rhem for a pinch-hitter when the Cardinals had the tying run at third in the second inning. Beyond that, he questioned the decision to start Rhem in the first place when Bill Hallahan, who led the staff in starts and wins, was rested and ready to go. Street seemed insulted by the criticism. “I thought Rhem was the one who would win for us. Beyond that I have nothing to say,” he snapped.9

The defeated Cardinals moped around the clubhouse for a few moments until Frisch, bat in hand, jumped up on an equipment trunk and shouted, “Is there a man here who thinks we’re licked?” Combative Game One starter Burleigh Grimes responded, “Hell, no!” and his suddenly re-energized teammates joined in the shouting.10

In truth, St. Louis had good reason to despair. They had been dominated in the first two games, their number four and five hitters, Bottomley and Hafey, were a combined 1-for-16, and no team had ever rallied from a 2-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven World Series. Nonetheless, the Series was headed west for the next three games, Hallahan would be on the mound in Game Three, and the Cardinals’ reservoir of confidence was bottomless. “Enjoy yourselves until we get back,”11 Frisch sneered at the A’s fans as the Cardinals’ team buses prepared to pull away. Indeed, St. Louis would not go down easily.

SOURCES

In addition to the newspaper sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

The author also reviewed the following sources for play-by-play and other information:

“Gossip of Second Game,” The Sporting News, October 9, 1930: 6.

Isaminger, James C., and John M. McCullough. “A’s Topple Cards 6-1 for Second of Series; Earnshaw Fans 8,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 3, 1930: 1.

Macht, Norman. Connie Mack: The Turbulent and Triumphant Years (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 592.

Baumgartner, Stan. “Snappy Series Singles from Shibe Park as Macks Shuffled Cards in Second,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 3, 1930: 26.

NOTES

1 Harry T. Brundidge, “‘We Thought We Were the Better Club, Now We Know It,’ Says Gabby,” St. Louis Star, October 2, 1930: 1.

2 J. Roy Stockton, “Grimes Yields Only Five Hits; Cochrane and Simmons Get Homers; Grove Is Effective,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 1, 1930: 2B.

3 Shirley L. Povich, “Cardinal Guns Are Muffled by Earnshaw,” Washington Post, October 3, 1930: 1.

4 Sid Keener, “A’s Big Three Knock Gabby’s Plans Sky High,” St. Louis Star, October 3, 1930: 1.

5 J. Roy Stockton,”Rhem Batted from the Box; Watkins Knocks a Home Run, Cochrane Gets His Second One,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 2, 1930: 3C.

6 John Drebinger, “Athletics Win Again from Cardinals, 6-1,” New York Times, October 3, 1930: 1.

7 William Hennigan, “Mack Praises Pitching of Earnshaw,” Washington Post, October 3, 1930: 19.

8 Hennigan.

9 Sid Keener, “Sid Keener’s Column,” St. Louis Star, October 3, 1930: 22.

10 Harry T. Brundidge, “Rhem’s Failure Victory for Drys, Says Teammate,” St. Louis Star, October 3, 1930: 1.

11 Herman Wecke, “Redbirds Think Hallahan’s Speed Will Check Athletics,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 3, 1930: 2B.