September 2, 1942: Hank Borowy’s no-hit bid ends early for Yankees, but no one knows

It’s heartbreaking when a no-hit bid ends in the ninth inning. On September 2, 1942, Hank Borowy’s bid for the New York Yankees against the St. Louis Browns ended in the first inning … but he didn’t know it until after the game was over.

The Yankees, cruising to a second straight American League pennant, had ended August with a three-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers to take an eight-game lead over the second-place Boston Red Sox. The Browns, who hadn’t had a winning season since 1929, had a 68-61 record, leaving them 17½ games out.

The Yankees and Browns played a Wednesday doubleheader at Yankee Stadium on September 2. The Yankees won the first game in dramatic fashion, with Charlie Keller hitting a walk-off home run in the 10th inning off Elden Auker.

Game two matched Borowy, a 26-year-old rookie making his 18th career start, and 30-year-old Denny Galehouse, a righty in his ninth major-league season. Borowy entered with a 12-3 record and a 2.76 ERA in 143 1/3 innings. He had held the Browns to two runs (one earned) on six hits and three walks in his first start against them, on July 9, but they hammered him for seven runs on 13 hits and 2 walks in 5 2/3 innings on July 31.

Galehouse was 11-10 with a 3.77 ERA; he had pitched against the Yankees five times earlier in the season and was roughed up for 23 runs (16 earned) on 27 hits and 15 walks in 21 2/3 innings. In his previous appearance against New York, on August 2, he gave up three runs without getting an out.

In the top of the first, St. Louis second baseman Don Gutteridge grounded out to his opposite number, Joe Gordon. Third baseman Harlond Clift then hit a grounder to Gordon’s left. Gordon, en route to the AL Most Valuable Player Award, got a hand on it, but it rolled onto the outfield grass. Gordon recovered and tossed the ball to first baseman Buddy Hassett, but Clift beat it out.1

The Brooklyn Eagle described it as “an infield grass cutter” and said that Gordon “got his meat hand on the ball but it was a bit too hard to hold.”2 The Associated Press characterized the play as “a smash by Harlond Clift that glanced off second baseman Joe Gordon’s glove.”3 The United Press said it was “a sharp grounder down between first and second base” that Gordon got a glove on, juggled for an instant, then threw to first, but too late.4

The official scorer, Rud Rennie of the New York Herald Tribune, called it a hit. He later said Clift’s ball “wasn’t a particularly hard smash,” but a difficult play as Gordon was shaded up the middle. Gordon “had to go toward first base and back on the grass to make the try,” Rennie observed. “Maybe he could handle it. Maybe he couldn’t. Anyway, he got his glove on it and I called it a hit.”5

But Rennie’s announcement didn’t travel beyond the scribes around him in the press box, because, as the Associated Press reported, “the scoreboard at Yankee Stadium does not show whether plays are hits or errors, contrary to the custom at most major league parks.”6

The scoreboard was updated each inning with the runs scored, but the total runs – and the number of hits and errors – weren’t updated until after the game was completed.7

Many of the 26,872 fans in attendance, as well as the players, assumed it was an error. As the game progressed, only two other Browns reached on balls put in play, and both were “obvious errors”8 –  one by third baseman Jerry Priddy and the other by shortstop Phil Rizzuto – “the fans felt certain they were sitting in on an historic event.”9

So did Borowy. “Sure, I thought I had a no-hitter and the whole team thought so,” he said after the game.10

Soon the apparent no-hitter became the game’s only drama. The Yankees took the lead after Priddy’s fourth-inning single knocked in Joe DiMaggio, and Gordon’s RBI double capped a three-run fifth inning. Two more runs in the seventh made the score 6-0.

In the ninth, Borowy got Clift to fly to Keller in left and Glenn McQuillen to ground to Priddy at third. Wally Judnich struck out for the third time – Borowy’s 10th of the game, against just two walks – to end it.11

“Borowy walked down from the mound thinking he had registered a no-hitter,” Jack Cuddy of the United Press wrote. “His mates thought so. Likewise the fans. Hundreds of them streamed out onto the field to congratulate Borowy. He had to be rescued from the backslappers.”12

But at last the scoreboard was updated with the final totals13 – showing one hit for the Browns.

“There was a murmur of disbelief and disapproval. Brigades of fans swarmed to the press box and shouted vituperation at the official scorer,” Cuddy observed.14

Paul Scheffels of the United Press reported that the fans had “hoisted [Borowy] on their shoulders and only then learned that it had not been a no-hitter. They booed the official scorer.”15

Gordon was careful in his response to questions about Rennie’s call. “If I hit that ball I would want a hit on it. But I wish I had the chance to make that play all over again,” he said after the game.16 He told the New York Times, “I make ninety-nine out of a hundred such plays. However, don’t get me wrong. I may see it this way, but the official scorer saw it the other way.”17

A week later, Gordon was quoted as sounding more certain, but still diplomatic: “I should have got it. It probably was an error. But it was coming awfully fast, and I won’t criticize the official scorer.”18

But the only opinion that mattered was Rennie’s.

“Gordon’s a great second baseman. If every ball he got his glove on during a season’s play was called an error, he’d end up with more errors than any man in the league,” Rennie said, adding, “I don’t think it’s fair to Clift or any other hitter to penalize him for Gordon’s super ability.”19

Syndicated writer Tom Meany claimed the play was correctly scored a hit “in the opinion of 95 per cent of the players,”20 and Louis Effrat of the New York Times wrote that those watching from the press box “almost unanimously agreed that Clift was entitled to the hit. Similar plays come up daily that are scored exactly as this one was.”21

The Brooklyn Eagle agreed: “Had the play come up in the ninth inning the scorer probably would have ruled it an error. Doing so wouldn’t have made him right, for the [sic] called it as he saw it in the first inning. But the fans who stormed the press box after the game were 100 percent wrong. Any other second baseman than Gordon wouldn’t have even gotten a hand on the ball.”22

The confusion about whether Clift’s ball had been a hit or error heightened calls for a change to be made to Yankee Stadium’s scoreboard. Sportswriter Dan Daniel wrote after the incident that “now the agitation for hit-and-error signs on the scoreboard is stronger than ever.”

But Daniel continued: “The writers in the Stadium will fight the ‘H’ and ‘E’ signs because the Stadium press box is exposed. If the scorer had any privacy, there would be no demurrer.”23

A letter to the editor in the New York Times published 10 days after Borowy’s game opined: “Had I and the many thousands of other fans at the game known that Harlond Clift’s bounder had been adjudged a hit by the official scorer we wouldn’t have been so upset when the totals were posted on the scoreboard.

“Practically all other ball parks, including Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, have such signs. Why not the Yankee Stadium?”24

Borowy finished the season 15-4 with a 2.52 ERA and 4 shutouts. He was tied for second in the AL in shutouts, fifth in ERA, and tied for sixth in wins. The Yankees lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in five games.

The Yankee Stadium scoreboard finally added a “hit and error” sign in 1946.25 By then, Borowy had moved on to the Chicago Cubs. On June 10 of that season, he took a no-hitter and an 8-1 lead into the eighth inning against the Philadelphia Phillies – only to lose the no-hitter and the game in a wild finish.

Almost exactly six years after his near no-no at Yankee Stadium, on August 31, 1948, Borowy pitched a one-hit shutout against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the first game of a doubleheader at Wrigley Field. The only hit was a second-inning single by Gene Hermanski, who was then thrown out stealing, and Borowy didn’t allow another baserunner, facing the minimum 27 batters.

That day the New York Times recounted Borowy’s almost no-hitter: “Hank pitched a one-hitter for the Yankees the year he joined them, 1942, against the Browns and didn’t learn until later that he had not pitched a no-hitter. Joe Gordon bobbled a ball hit by Harlond Clift and Hank thought it had been scored as an error instead of a hit.” 26

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Hank Borowy, SABR-Rucker Archive.

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 and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA194209022.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1942/B09022NYA1942.htm

Notes

1 “Scribbled by Scribes,” The Sporting News, September 10, 1942: 4.

2 “Borowy, Scorer Both Suffer in One-Hit Affair,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 3, 1942: 11.

3 Associated Press, “Hank Borowy Gets 1-Hitter; Sox Take Pair,” Grass Valley (California) Morning Union September 3, 1942: 2.

4 United Press, “Hank Borowy, Yank Rookie, Stars Again,” Blytheville (Arkansas) Courier News, September 3, 1942: 5.

5 “Players Uphold Scorer,” The Sporting News, September 10, 1942: 8.

6 “Hank Borowy Gets 1-Hitter; Sox Take Pair.”

7 Scoreboard indicators to inform the fans of the official scorer’s ruling were a subject of debate at the time. For example, in his column published April 18, 1935 (page 4), in The Sporting News, J.G. Taylor Spink reported: “Rogers Hornsby is one of the game’s most broad-minded, but he objects to hit-and-error scoreboard announcements, because he thinks it might annoy thin-skinned ball players, something the Rajah never was.” Dan Daniel, in a column in The Sporting News published July 17, 1941 (page 4), said such an indicator on the scoreboard at Yankee Stadium put the official scorer in danger because he sits in the press box. “The fans are right on top of the Scorer,” Daniel wrote. Should a scorer rule a ball in play an error during Joe DiMaggio’s hit streak, “you may get your noggin opened up.” (Coincidentally, DiMaggio’s hit streak ended that every day in Cleveland.) Taking the opposite position was Jimmy Powers, sports editor of the New York Daily News, who was quoted as saying in The Sporting News on April 11, 1940 (page 4): “We still believe fans are entitled to know at once whether or not a man has reached first on a hit or error.”

8 Louis Effrat, “Borowy Misses No-Hit Game on Scratch Single as Yankees Win Two,” New York Times, September 3, 1942: 26.

9 “Hank Borowy Gets 1-Hitter; Sox Take Pair.”

10 “Scribbled by Scribes.”

11 By game score (93), it was the best start of Borowy’s career.

12 “Scribbled by Scribes.”

13 “American League,” The Sporting News, September 10, 1942: 12. “There were expressions of displeasure from spectators who waited to see the runs, hits and errors posted after the game, when the scoreboard showed St. Louis credited with one hit.”

14 “Scribbled by Scribes.”

15 Paul Scheffels, “Dodgers’ Rally, Lead Darken Cards’ Hopes,” Olean (New York) Times Herald, September 3, 1942: 14.

16 “Borowy, Scorer Both Suffer in One-Hit Affair.”

17 Effrat.

18 “Scribbled by Scribes.”

19 “Players Uphold Scorer.”

20 “Players Uphold Scorer.”

21 Effrat, “Borowy Misses No-Hit Game on Scratch Single.”

22 “Borowy, Scorer Both Suffer in One-Hit Affair.”

23 Dan Daniel, “Yanks Feel Pressure – It’s for Series Seats,” The Sporting News, September 10, 1942: 5.

24 S. Wilfred Weberman, “Hit-and-Error Sign Needed,” New York Times, September 12, 1942: 17. The letter was addressed to the sports editor, and was followed by an editorial note: “President E.G. Barrow of the Yankees is the only person who can answer that one.”

25 Joseph Drebinger, “Leonard, Senators, Subdues Yanks, 2-1,” New York Times, May 29, 1946: 26. It also was the first game to be played under the lights at Yankee Stadium.

26 Roscoe McGowen, “Borowy’s 1-Hitter Blanks Brooks, 3-0,” New York Times, September 1, 1948: 28.