September 15, 1904: New York Highlanders, Boston Americans tie for second day in a row

Avoiding stalemate proved difficult for the Boston Americans during a three-day stretch in mid-September 1904, as damp, gloomy weather stalked the Northeast and left late-season American League contests unresolved. Out of five games – two doubleheaders and a single contest – the Americans played three that ended in ties: one on September 13, one on September 14, and one on September 15.

It wasn’t as if the games were meaningless. For Boston and the New York Highlanders, the AL’s fourth season was quite a race. Since July 27, the two teams had swapped first place multiple times, but neither team was ever more than two games ahead of the other. They had been tied as recently as September 8, but then Boston, winner of the first-ever World Series between the American and National Leagues a season earlier, edged ahead and was a half-game up on the Highlanders after play on September 12.1

Boston’s run of ties began during a four-game road series against the Philadelphia Athletics. After a 13-inning, 1-0 Americans win in the first game on September 10 and a doubleheader split two days later,2 pitchers Jesse Tannehill (for Boston) and Weldon Henley pitched to a seven-inning scoreless tie on September 13, with each team managing just two base hits before umpire Tommy Connolly halted the game due to rain and wind.3

The Americans returned home on September 14 for a six-games-in-three days showdown with the Highlanders at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. It was another miserable day for weather.4 Though Bill Dinneen held New York to just two hits to open the first doubleheader, seven Boston errors did him in, 3-1, dropping the Americans to a half-game behind the Highlanders in the standings. New York ace Jack Chesbro improved his season record to 34-8.

The second game was called after five innings, a 1-1 tie.5 Boston’s Norwood Gibson allowed just one hit and walked no one, but New York’s Jack Powell matched him in the draw, allowing four hits.

On September 15, the doubleheader drew 16,043, nearly double the crowd from Wednesday, with an overflow kept behind ropes in the outfield. In the opener, New York scored once in the first and again the third off Tannehill, pitching after one day of rest, but Boston rallied with two to tie in the fifth inning.

The Americans took the lead in the seventh, with Tannehill himself kicking things off with a triple into the right-field corner, just barely beating the throw, and scoring two batters later on shortstop Freddy Parent’s groundball to third base.6 When New York’s Wid Conroy struck out with the bases loaded in the ninth, capping Tannehill’s 21st win of the season, Boston again had a half-game lead.

The second game pitted Boston player/manager Jimmy Collins’s starting pitcher George Winter (8-3, 2.48) against Powell, who returned after a five-inning outing in the previous day’s tie. Powell was 20-16 with a 2.59 ERA.

The first game had taken two hours to play. The second went the full nine innings as well.

Boston scored first, in the bottom of the first inning. Left fielder Kip Selbach led off with a hit to Patsy Dougherty, who fumbled the ball in left-center as Selbach reached third on what was scored a triple.7 One out later, center fielder Chick Stahl hit a ball back to Powell, who fielded it after falling. The only play was to first, and Selbach scored.

Selbach tripled again in the third, but it was with two outs and Parent popped up to second base.

Boston had a golden opportunity to add to its lead in the fourth inning, loading the bases with nobody out. Stahl had singled, and both Collins and Buck Freeman had reached safely on back-to-back bunts.

But first baseman Candy LaChance struck out “weakly”8 and second baseman Hobe Ferris hit the ball back to Powell, who threw to catcher Deacon McGuire, whose relay to John Ganzel at first Ferris for a 1-2-3 inning-ending double play. McGuire, two months from his 41st birthday, caught all four games of the back-to-back doubleheaders.

In the second, third, and fourth innings, New York got runners into scoring position but couldn’t get one home against Winters. The Highlanders finally scored in the sixth. Ganzel hit a one-out single, followed by Conroy hitting one “just over the ropes in left field”9 – and thus a triple under the ground rules of the day. The game was tied, but Winters retired McGuire to strand another Highlander in scoring position.

The Boston Herald calculated that Winter “had a hand in 14 of the 27 putouts,” with eight assists and six strikeouts.10

The game was ultimately called due to darkness or because, in the words of Tim Murnane, writing in the Boston Globe, “umpire Jack] Sheridan figured it was time for supper and that both players and patrons had had enough of a good thing for one afternoon.”11

“There wasn’t a dull moment in either game,” declared the Boston Herald. “Both clubs were on edge, and every man played as if his life depended on the result, and as a consequence the spectator saw ball of a quality rarely seen on a ball field.”12

There was yet another doubleheader played the next day, September 16. The two evenly-matched teams split, Chesbro beating Bill Dinneen in the first game, 6-4, increasing his record to 35-8, and Cy Young beating Ned Garvin in the second, 4-2. With the 399th win of his distinguished pitching career, the 37-year-old Young became a 20-game winner for the 14th season in a row.

The race remained tight, and the season ended with Boston going 8-2 in 10 October games, winning three of the final four over New York and flipping from a half-game behind to winning by 1½ games. It was in another doubleheader, on October 10, the season’s final day, that Dinneen outdueled Chesbro, Boston’s Lou Criger scored the decisive run on a wild pitch, and the Americans finally clinched their second AL pennant in a row.

There was no World Series in 1904. Boston had beaten Pittsburgh the year before, but John McGraw and the New York Giants declined to take on the American League champions in 1904.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin 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.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS190409152.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1904/B09152BOS1904.htm

Notes

1 The Buffalo News said that manager Jimmy Collins’s team was in first place “by a margin so small it must be painful.” “Right off the Bat,” Buffalo News, September 13, 1904: 8. Boston’s winning percentage was .617 and New York’s was .616.

2 Boston won the first game, 6-4, but lost the second, 6-2, called after six innings on account of darkness.

3 Neither team had committed an error. For Connolly to call the second game when he did may have been something of an act of mercy. “A more miserable day for baseball could not have been offered,” wrote the Boston Herald, adding that there was no complaint from the paying customers. There was a “heavy mist” and “a northwest wind blew into the faces of the crowd and chilled the occupants of the bleachers to the bone.” “Not a Run Made by Either Side,” Boston Herald, September 14, 1904: 8.

4 The Boston Journal wrote, “Baseball has never been played in Boston under worse conditions.” It drizzled as the first game began and the fog was so heavy that “the outfielders were but dim figures from the grandstand. Indeed, before the tie game was called off [by umpire Sheridan] it was impossible to see any of the building over on Huntington avenue.” “Invaders Win One Game and Jump Into Lead in the Race,” Boston Journal, September 15, 1904: 1.

5 The game had been rescheduled from May 9, a game that was rained out. The reason for the second game on September 14 was another early rainout, from June 29.

6 As the New York Times noted, “Parent was responsible for all of Boston’s runs, and he fielded in his old-time manner.” “AMERICAN LEAGUE: Boston Turns Tables on Greater New Yorks and Regains Lead,” New York Times, September 16, 1904: 8.

7 Both the Boston Globe and New York Times assigned Dougherty an error and Selbach a double.

8 W.S. Barnes Jr., “Champions Are in Lead Once More for Pennant,” Boston Journal, September 16, 1904: 1, 4.

9 Barnes.

10 “Beat ’Em Once, Then Held ’Em,” Boston Herald, September 16, 1904: 1, 9.

11 T.H. Murnane, “Champs in Lead Again,” Boston Globe, September 16, 1904: 1, 3.

12 “Beat ’Em Once, Then Held ’Em.”