September 1, 1956: Two no-hitters on same night add drama to Eastern League pennant chase

What spices up a late-season pennant chase quite like a no-hitter? Try two of them on the same night, involving the league’s top two teams.

Fans of the Class A Eastern League1 witnessed those fireworks on Saturday, September 1, 1956, when the first-place Schenectady Blue Jays entered the day 2½ games ahead of the second-place Binghamton Triplets.2 The “Trips” swept a doubleheader from the Syracuse Chiefs, highlighted by a 6-0, seven-inning no-hitter by right-hander Zach Monroe in the first game.3

But this sterling effort gained the Trips no ground, because Schenectady swept its own doubleheader from the Albany Senators—and pitched its own no-hitter.4 Righty Henry Bolinda blanked the Senators in the nightcap, winning 1-0 in nine innings. It was the first time in the league’s 62-season history that two no-hitters were pitched on the same day. As of 2026, it had not happened since.5

Only 10 days remained in the season when September dawned.6 In addition to Schenectady, a Philadelphia Phillies farm club, and Binghamton, a New York Yankees affiliate, the third-place Reading Indians were still a threat at three games back.7

The Triplets’ and Blue Jays’ opponents were farther behind. Syracuse, a Detroit Tigers affiliate, was in seventh place, 17½ games back. Albany, affiliated with the Boston Red Sox, sat in fifth place, 16½ games behind.8

The night’s no-hit adventures began at Johnson Field near Binghamton. The Triplets boasted an offense that placed at or near the league lead in doubles, triples, walks, home runs, and RBIs.9 Center fielder and leadoff hitter Russ Snyder hit .286 en route to a 12-season major-league career. Other big boppers in manager Freddie Fitzsimmons’ lineup included third baseman Dick Sanders (.305, 25 HRs, 95 RBIs) and right fielder Frank Wehner (.263/16/51).

Monroe had battled wildness in 1952 and 1955,10 and he’d served the intervening years in military service.11 But he improved his control in 1956 and had a breakout season, going 16-7 with a 2.67 ERA in 31 games and completing 15 of 24 starts. He’d started the night before, a three-inning rainout, but Fitzsimmons returned him to the mound for the first game.12

The Syracuse Chiefs were lighter hitters than the Triplets, posting a team average of .236. Kent Hadley, who went on to parts of three seasons in the bigs, started at first base; he hit six homers in 29 games in Syracuse. Left fielder Andy Rellick led the league with 22 homers,13 and right fielder Dick Giedlin added 11 homers and 65 RBIs.

Syracuse’s starter was righty Tom Van Remmen, a Western New York native who’d dabbled in the outfield before committing to pitching. Van Remmen divided 1956 between three minor-league teams at two levels.14 In Syracuse, he went 2-6 with a 4.50 ERA in 22 games, mostly in relief.

The Chiefs threatened in the top of the first. With one out, third baseman Harry Durkin walked, stole second, and moved to third on Giedlin’s groundout. Monroe got the third out, and no other Syracuse batter reached third base..15

The Triplets got the only run they needed with one out in the first. Left fielder Joe Tesauro tripled on a deep fly ball misjudged by his opposite number, Andy Rellick. The next batter, first baseman Jerry Kudajeski, gave Binghamton a 1-0 lead with a sacrifice fly to center field.16

Rookie Hadley scared Triplets fans in the top of the second, pounding a long fly that Snyder hauled in at the center-field wall.17 In the bottom half, history repeated. With two runners on via a single and a walk, shortstop Hal Charnofsky drove a fly to right that Giedlin misplayed into a triple. The Triplets took a 3-0 lead.

Monroe walked five batters against three strikeouts, and he got into a jam in the third inning by issuing a pair of two-out walks. He escaped by striking out Rellick with what the Binghamton Sunday Press called “beautiful sliders.” Monroe later said that, although his fastball hadn’t been sharp, his slider was breaking well all game.18 The Chiefs also got a runner on base in the fifth on the game’s only error, as third baseman Sanders made a wild throw to first on a grounder.

Van Remmen, who took the loss, was pulled after four innings and righty Don Bradey worked the final two. The Triplets pieced together three more runs off Bradey in the sixth in a rally that included two hits, two sacrifices, and a fielder’s choice.19

With approximately 2,500 fans cheering every out, Monroe sealed his no-hitter in the seventh by getting catcher Frank Calo to ground out, ending the game in 1 hour and 30 minutes. It was the first no-hit, no-run game by a Binghamton pitcher since 1943.20 The Triplets romped to a 14-2 win in the nightcap.

The scene then shifted to Schenectady, where the Blue Jays beat the Senators, 6-1, in the opener in front of about 1,500 fans, including league president Tommy Richardson.21

The doubleheader matched up the league’s feeblest offenses: Albany hit .235 and Schenectady a league-worst .232. The Jays boasted the loop’s stingiest pitching, though, surrendering 3.3 runs per game—almost a full run below league average. According to a Schenectady Gazette story, Blue Jays pitchers had two one-hitters, six two-hitters, and seven three-hitters to their credit in 1956.22

Schenectady manager Dick Carter’s lineup included future major leaguers in left fielder Don Landrum (.282, 18 stolen bases), left fielder Harry Anderson (13 HRs, 48 RBIs), and first baseman Pancho Herrera (.286/14/88).

Pitcher Bolinda, a Pittsburgh native, had much in common with Monroe. Like Monroe, he’d debuted in 1952, then spent two seasons in military service.23 He’d struggled to find the plate, walking 131 batters in 221 innings at Class A Bradford in 1955.24 And he’d gotten a better handle on control in 1956, when he posted a 9-8 record and 2.67 ERA in 19 games with Schenectady.25 Bolinda had thrown a pair of two-hitters in 1955 but had never pitched a no-hitter.26

Albany manager Sheriff Robinson had one future big-leaguer in his lineup. Shortstop and leadoff hitter Pumpsie Green hit .274 that season; three years later, he became the first Black player in Red Sox history, the last major-league team to integrate.27 Other big bats, relatively speaking, belonged to first baseman Matthew Daskalakis (12 HRs, 66 RBIs) and left fielder Joe Tedesco (12 HRs, 54 RBIs).

The Senators’ starter, righty Stan Willis, was a week shy of his 22nd birthday. In 1955 Willis had crafted a successful professional debut (19-6, 3.28) for San Jose of the Class C California League. While he found Eastern League batters more challenging, he pitched solidly in 1956, posting a 13-12 record and 3.29 ERA in 35 games. That win total tied him with Earl Wilson—later a big-league no-hit hero28—for most on the staff.

Bolinda came out blazing, striking out the side in the first inning. He’d do so again in the ninth.29 Through six innings he yielded three walks, and a fourth Albany runner reached on an error by Herrera.

Senators batters managed well-hit fly balls in the second and sixth innings. But the biggest early threat to the no-no came in the second, when Albany’s Bill Paolisso banged a robustly hit ball off Bolinda’s shins. The pitcher chased it down and threw out Paolisso at first on a bang-bang play.

Willis was almost as good, surrendering only one hit through six innings, a third-inning double by third baseman Red Robbins. Willis walked four batters, then grouped these free passes with other misadventures to hand the Blue Jays opportunities. In the second, he walked two batters and hit a third, but got Bolinda to ground into an inning-ending force. In the fifth, he walked two more and threw wildly to first for an error, again loading the bases. Green bailed him out by starting a 6-4-3 double play.

Bolinda’s catcher, Bob DePopolo, hit a scant .141 across 115 games that season, with a .197 slugging percentage. But in the seventh inning, the eighth-place hitter drove a Willis pitch into a strong wind and over the left-field fence for his fourth and last homer of the season, and Schenectady claimed a 1-0 lead. It was one of only three hits off Willis, who went the distance.30

A public address announcement about Monroe’s no-hitter focused Schenectady fans’ attention on the no-no in progress, and Bolinda admitted to nerves in the final innings. He gave up one hard-hit ball in the eighth to Willis, a drive to right-center field that right fielder Jim Davis ran down. But the Senators gave Bolinda no trouble in the ninth. He struck out Green, center fielder Dick McCarthy, and right fielder Hal Buckwalter31 to end the game in about 2½ hours.32

After the game, Bolinda said his fastball carried the load, as he couldn’t get his curve to work consistently until the late innings. “His fastball was doing tricks,” DePopolo added. Manager Carter focused on the bottom line: “He pitched a great game … at the most opportune moment which enabled us to keep our first-place lead over the Triplets.”33

After the drama of September 1, no one could overtake the Blue Jays. Schenectady finished first with an 84-54 record. Binghamton finished second at 81-58, 3½ games back.34 In the first round of the Shaughnessy-style playoffs, third-place Reading eliminated Binghamton in three games, while Schenectady swept the fourth-place Allentown Cardinals. Schenectady then swept Reading in the finals.

The no-hit heroes followed different paths. Bolinda’s control deserted him in 1957, when he walked 71 in 75 innings across three levels of the minors. It was his final season in pro baseball. Monroe reached the majors in 1958 and 1959, pitching in Game Two of the World Series with the champion 1958 Yankees.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Thomas Merrick and copyedited by Keith Thursby. The author thanks Games Project Chair John Fredland for giving permission to summarize two games in one story.

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 minor-league games, but newspapers in all four cities published box scores in their editions of September 2 or 3, 1956. The author consulted all of these box scores, although the one printed in Schenectady was not completely legible in online sources.

Image of 1959 Topps card #108 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 At the time, the Eastern League was three levels below the majors, with Triple-A and Double-A above it. The Eastern League reclassified as Double-A, two steps below the majors, in 1963, and continued to operate at that level as of the 2026 season.

2 Eastern League standings from the Binghamton (New York) Press, September 1, 1956: 10.

3 It has long been common practice in the minor leagues, as well as college baseball, to reduce the length of one or both games of a doubleheader to seven innings. Both doubleheaders described in this story consisted of a seven-inning first game and a nine-inning nightcap.

4 These two no-hitters were the only ones of the 1956 season in the Eastern League, according to the Baseball-Reference list of minor-league no-hitters cited below, as well as “Melton Eastern Batting Champ,” The Knickerbocker News (Albany, New York), September 10, 1956: 6B.

5 Based on Charley Peet, “Monroe’s No-Hitter Matched by Jay,” Binghamton Sunday Press, September 2, 1956: D1, and a review of the Baseball-Reference B-R Bullpen decade-by-decade lists of minor-league no-hitters, accessed in August 2025, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Minor_League_No-Hitters.

6 Final Eastern League standings were published in various newspapers on September 10, 1956, indicating that the season had ended the previous day. One example can be found in the Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette, September 10, 1956: 16.

7 As their name would suggest, Reading was a Cleveland Indians affiliate. The Reading team split a doubleheader with Allentown on September 1, 1956, losing the first game, 2-1, and winning the second, 5-2. “Baseball Summary,” Binghamton Sunday Press, September 2, 1956: D1.

8 Eastern League standings from the Binghamton Press, September 1, 1956: 10. The Albany Senators’ nickname reflected their city’s status as the capital of New York state, not their major-league affiliation.

9 Binghamton’s team batting average of .242 ranked fifth in the league, slightly below the league average of .246.

10 In 1952, Monroe went 7-6 with a 5.04 ERA at Class A Quincy, walking 79 hitters in 91 innings. In 1955 with Binghamton he went 12-11, 5.46, walking 121 hitters in 179 innings.

11 Bob Phillips, “Kite and Mainini Sparkle,” Birmingham (Alabama) Post-Herald, March 9, 1955: 19.

12 Peet, “Monroe’s No-Hitter Matched by Jay.” Fitzsimmons was reportedly forced to use Monroe again because the Triplets had a long string of doubleheaders.

13 “Athlete of Week” (photo and caption), Syracuse Herald-American, September 9, 1956: 68. As of August 2025, Baseball-Reference did not have Rellick’s Eastern League statistics for 1956 on record.

14 The other two teams were Terre Haute in the Class B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League, and Augusta in the Class A South Atlantic League.

15 Peet, “Monroe’s No-Hitter Matched by Jay.” Peet’s story does not specify how Syracuse’s third out was made, and the Syracuse Herald-American’s game story does not mention these events at all. Left fielder Andy Rellick, who followed Giedlin in the lineup, went 0-for-3, so it seems likely that Monroe retired Rellick for the third out.

16 “Monroe No-Hits Tribe,” Syracuse Herald-American, September 2, 1956: 25.

17 All gameplay descriptions for the Binghamton-Syracuse game are taken from Peet, “Monroe’s No-Hitter Matched by Jay,” and “Monroe No-Hits Tribe” unless otherwise specified.

18 Monroe’s catcher for his big night, incidentally, was 27-year-old minor-league veteran Lamar North. North played 13 seasons and managed four in the minor leagues—some of them overlapping—but did not reach the bigs in an on-field role. He later scouted for the Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Baltimore Orioles. “Lamar North,” Baseball-Reference BR Bullpen, accessed August 2025, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Lamar_North.

19 Neither the Binghamton Sunday Press nor the Syracuse Herald-American gave further specifics about the final three runs. Bradey later reached the majors for three games with the 1964 Houston Colt .45s.

20 On August 14, 1943, Binghamton’s Charles Haag beat Albany 2-0. Binghamton’s Dave Latter and Tom Gorman had no-hit Elmira on August 1, 1948, but gave up four runs to lose 4-3.

21 Dick Walsh, “Senators No-Hit by Jays’ Bolinda,” Albany (New York) Times-Union, September 2, 1956: B5.

22 Lou Torre, “Jay Pitching Hits Jackpot with Bolinda’s No-Hitter,” Schenectady (New York) Gazette, September 3, 1956: 8.

23 Torre, “Jay Pitching Hits Jackpot with Bolinda’s No-Hitter.”.

24 Bolinda managed an excellent 20-8 record and 3.10 ERA despite his wildness, tying for the Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York (PONY) League lead in wins. The other pitcher to win 20, Gary Geiger of Hamilton, later converted to the outfield and enjoyed a 12-season big-league career.

25 Bolinda walked 67 hitters in 128 innings with Schenectady after pitching six games at Triple-A Miami to start the season. He pitched a total of nine Triple-A games in 1956 and 1957, the high-water mark of his pro career.

26 Torre, “Jay Pitching Hits Jackpot with Bolinda’s No-Hitter.”

27 Green, born Elijah Jerry Green, was referred to as “Jerry Green” in game stories in Albany and Schenectady newspapers.

28 On June 26, 1962, Wilson became the first Black pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the American League. He also hit a home run in the game as the Boston Red Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels, 2-0. Wilson had a 13-9 record for Albany in 1956.

29 All gameplay descriptions for the Schenectady-Albany game are taken from Walsh, “Senators No-Hit by Jays’ Bolinda,” and Lou Torre, “Blue Jays Sweep Albany; Add To Lead,” and “Jay Pitching Hits Jackpot With Bolinda’s No-Hitter,” both Schenectady (New York) Gazette, September 3, 1956: 8. These sources vary on Bolinda’s strikeout total for the game: The Albany paper reported eight strikeouts, the Schenectady paper six.

30 Box scores indicate that Landrum collected the third hit, but game accounts do not specify when.

31 In “Jay Pitching Hits Jackpot with Bolinda’s No-Hitter,” Torre reported that Dick McCarthy was Albany’s last hitter of the game. This account sides with Walsh, “Senators No-Hit by Jays’ Bolinda,” which specifies that Ed Lavene, Bill Paolisso, and Stan Willis batted for the Senators in the eighth inning. Green, McCarthy, and Buckwalter would have been the next three batters in the Senators’ lineup. Walsh’s account mentions that Bolinda struck out Green and Buckwalter in the ninth, but neglects to mention McCarthy, who batted between them.

32 The time of game is cut off in online versions of the Schenectady newspaper’s box score and difficult to read in the Albany paper, where it appears to say either 2 hours 25 minutes or 2 hours 35 minutes.

33 Torre, “Jay Pitching Hits Jackpot with Bolinda’s No-Hitter.”

34 Schenectady also tied three games, while Binghamton tied two.