September 13, 1925: Dazzy Vance tosses first no-hitter in Ebbets Field history

The Brooklyn Robins were winding down a disappointing season. Widely considered to be a challenger for the NL pennant in 1925, owing to its strong second-place (92-62) finish the year before, the club had “slumped badly,” opined the Brooklyn Eagle.1 Skipper Wilbert Robinson’s squad (65-68) was in fourth place, 17½ games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates. The pitching staff was expected to be its strength, but it had underperformed, and would finish the season with the league’s second highest ERA (4.77), more than a run worse than the previous campaign. The exception to the club’s dismal performances was Dazzy Vance, whom Robinson called his “only consistent winner we have had this season.”2

Vance laid claim to being the big leagues’ best and most overpowering pitcher. After several cups of coffee in the 1910s, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound right-hander finally caught on as a 31-year-old with the Robins in 1922 by “propel[ling] baseball’s fastest ball,” cooed Brooklyn’s Times Union.3 Two years later he won a major-league-most 28 games, led baseball with a 2.16 ERA, and was named the National League MVP. Described by the Eagle as the “master of the cyclonic delivery and deceptive curvist,” Vance also captured his third straight strikeout crown, fanning 262, the most in the NL since Christy Mathewson’s 267 in 1903.4 With less than three weeks to go in the 1925 regular season, Vance once again sat atop the NL leaderboards with 21 wins and 204 strikeouts.

Vance took the mound against the tail-end Philadelphia Phillies (58-77) in the opener of a Sunday doubleheader, which had been originally schedule on Labor Day Monday, but was postponed by inclement weather. As the crowd estimated at 20,000 at Ebbets Field settled into their seats, Vance walked the first batter he faced, Heinie Sand. Two quick punchouts followed and a tapper to the hill ended the frame.

The Robins attacked the Phillies’ starter, 34-year-old journeyman spitballer Clarence Mitchell, who entered the game with a 10-15 slate and was 69-83 in parts of 11 seasons. Johnny Mitchell doubled to right, moved to third on a passed ball, and scored on Milt Stock’s single. After Jimmy Johnston tripled to drive in Stock, Philadelphia skipper Art Fletcher pulled Mitchell and sent in Art Decatur, whom the Robins knew well. He had been their swingman in the previous three seasons until his trade to the Phillies in late April. Dick Cox doubled to make it 3-0 with no outs. Two batters later, Cox scored on Charlie Hargreaves’ groundout.

The first-inning offensive outburst provided more than enough runs for the Robins on this fateful day, but Uncle Robbie’s men kept pounding the tater. In the fifth, they victimized Decatur for four more runs on five hits. Stock’s single drove in two and Johnston’s single accounted for another. After Dick Cox’s single put runners on first and third, Johnston tallied the fourth run on a daring delayed double steal, swiping home under the tag of Jimmie Wilson. The Johnston and Stock tag-team continued in the sixth. Stock drew a walk off the Phillies third and final hurler, Huck Betts, and subsequently scored on Johnston’s single for the Robins’ ninth run. In the seventh Hank DeBerry’s sacrifice fly to plate Hargreaves accounted for the team’s 10th and final run.

Notwithstanding Brooklyn’s bashing, this game was about Vance, who had come close to throwing no-hitters in two of his last four starts, both of which came in the opener of twin bills in front of the home faithful in Flatbush. And in each game Lady Luck had forsaken him. On August 23 Vance blanked the Chicago Cubs, but surrendered what Brooklyn newspapers called two scratch hits. In his last outing, Vance had run roughshod over Phillies on September 8, yielding only an infield hit to Chicken Hawks with one out in the second, fanning six and walking none.

Dame Fortune was not entirely on Vance’s side in this game either. Hawks led off the second with a routine fly to left fielder Jimmy Johnstone, who had started because Zach Wheat was suffering from “stomach trouble.”5 According to sportswriter Richards Vidmer, the ball “struck in [Johnston’s] outstretched hand,” caroming to the ground for an error.6 Wheat “could have caught [the ball] in his watch pocket,” continued the longtime New York Times scribe. The Eagle was more forgiving, suggesting that the “miscue was rather excusable” because the sun was in left field, causing Johnston to misjudge the ball’s arc.7 Johnstone’s poor throw to the infield resulted in his second error and enabled Hawks to reach third. Bernie Friberg’s sacrifice to center, drove in Hawks. The Phillies’ run, wrote the Eagle was a “crime,” yet few in Ebbets Field could have surmised what would unfold over the next seven innings.8

“Inning after inning the Phils swung hard, but futilely,” gushed Brooklyn’s Standard Union.9 After Hawks reached safely, Vance retired 24 consecutive batters. Vance “had all of his speed,” remarked the Eagle, noting that the burly right-hander “used an abundance of fast curves and considerably more changes of pace and slow curves than usual.”10 The Philadelphia Inquirer described Vance as “superb and invulnerable.”11

Vance was “picture of perspiration after each inning,” wrote Charles Segar in the Brooklyn Citizen.12 It was a hot afternoon with temperatures in the mid-80s and especially humid.13 The rugged, stubbly-faced Vance continually brushed the sweat from his brow, yet seemed impervious to the “burning rays of sunshine” that had spectators continually fanning themselves.14

With two outs in the fifth, Wilson smashed what the Standard Union called a “wicked grounder” directly to Hargreaves at first.15 A backup catcher, Hargreaves was playing his first big-league game at first base, replacing star Jack Fournier, who was ill. Hargreaves made routine stop, then executed a “perfect peg” to Vance end the inning.16

Vance took the mound in the ninth “encased in tattered and sweat begrimed shirtsleeves,” wrote Brooklyn sportswriter Thomas W. Meany.17 Vance whipped two quick strikes to Lew Fonseca, pinch-hitting for Betts. Fonseca popped up Vance’s third offering. Hargreaves “had it in his hands,” noted the Times.18 However, the inexperienced first sacker fumbled the ball and it dropped into foul territory for an error. One can only imagine what Vance thought, but he suppressed his emotions to “curve over a fourth successive strike” to punch out Fonseca.19 The next batter, pinch-hitter Wally Kimmick, fanned on three straight pitches.20 Then Freddy Leach swung at Vance’s first pitch, and his eighth of the inning, connecting for the Phillies’ second hard drive of the game. The low liner rocketed straight to Johnstone, who atoned for his earlier miscue that resulted in the Phillies only run. He made a routine running catch, securing Vance’s no-hitter and ending the game in 1 hour and 45 minutes. Vance’s teammates from the field and dugout rushed to the mound to congratulate the popular and well-liked player for his accomplishment.

Vance’s dominance was “so thorough that not even brilliant fielding was required,” opined the Eagle.21 He struck out nine and walked one. In authoring the big leagues’ only no-hitter of the 1925 season, and the first in the history of Ebbets Field, Vance extended his hitless streak to 17⅓ innings. (It ended after two outs in the first inning of his next start.) He became the second pitcher in big-league history to toss a no-hitter and one-hitter in successive starts, joining Howard Ehmke, who accomplished the feat for the Boston Red Sox in 1923. (Max Scherzer of the Washington Nationals joined that select group in 2015; only the Cincinnati Reds’ Johnny Vander Meer tossed consecutive no-hitters, in 1938.) Vance’s no-hitter was Brooklyn’s first since Nap Rucker turned the trick against the Boston Braves on September 5, 1908, and the fourth in franchise history.22

With Brooklyn en route to a dismal sixth-place finish, Vance was shut down after his next start and did not pitch in the season’s final two weeks. Nonetheless, he led the NL with 22 wins, tied for the lead with four shutouts, won his fourth straight strikeout title, and finished second in complete games (26).

The Phillies avenged their loss to the Robins, 7-3, in the second game of the doubleheader. The game was marred by an ugly scene between the Phillies’ George Harper and Hargreaves at first base in the seventh inning. The two players almost came to blows after a shoving match and had to be restrained by teammates. When Harper took his position in left field to begin the eighth, spectators pelted him with bottles, forcing the game to be delayed by several minutes as the grounds crew cleaned the field.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

PHOTO CREDIT

After cups of coffee in 1915 and 1918, Dazzy Vance emerged as one of baseball’s best pitchers as a 31-year-old with Brooklyn in his first full season in 1922. He led the NL in strikeouts his first seven seasons and was the 1924 National League MVP with a big-league-best 28 wins and a 2.16 ERA. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

NOTES

1 “Dazzy Vance Finally Lands Nice in Hall of Fame,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 14, 1925: 20.

2 “Stock’s Homer With 2 On Makes Jess Petty Winner; Why Vance Did Not Play,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 13, 1925: D1.

3 Tomas W. Meany, “Vance Achieves Chief Ambition by Hurling No-Hit Game Against Phillies,” Brooklyn Times Union, September 14, 1925: 26.

4 “Dazzy Vance Finally Lands Nice in Hall of Fame,” Brooklyn Eagle.

5 “Dazzy Vance Finally Lands Nice in Hall of Fame.”

6 Richards Vidmer, “No Hits Off Vance, but Phils Get Run,” New York Times, September 14, 1925: 23.

7 “Dazzy Vance Finally Lands Nice in Hall of Fame.”

8 “Dazzy Vance Finally Lands Nice in Hall of Fame.”

9 “No-Hit Game by Vance Is Fitting Climax to Season of Brilliant Effort,” Brooklyn Standard Union, September 14, 1925: 12.

10 “Dazzy Vance Finally Lands Nice in Hall of Fame.”

11 “Johnston’s Error Spoils Shut-Out Win,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 14, 1925: 12.

12 Charles Segar, “Dazzy Vance’s No-Hit Ambition Is Finally Realized,” Brooklyn Citizen, September 14, 1925: 8.

13 “The Weather,” Brooklyn Standard Union, September 14, 1925: 16.

14 Vidmar.

15 “No-Hit Game by Vance Is Fitting Climax to Season of Brilliant Effort,” Brooklyn Standard Union.

16 “No-Hit Game by Vance Is Fitting Climax to Season of Brilliant Effort.”

17 Meany.

18 Vidmer.

19 Vidmer.

20 Vidmer.

21 “Dazzy Vance Finally Lands Nice in Hall of Fame.”

22 The first no-hitter in Brooklyn franchise history was by Tom Lovett on June 22, 1891, against the New York Giants. Mal Eason pitched one on July 20, 1906, against the St. Louis Cardinals.