September 25, 1899: Beaneaters’ Bill Ging earns only big-league win against Giants

The 1899 baseball season had not gone as expected, and the defending National League champion Boston Beaneaters, mired in third place behind the Brooklyn Superbas and Philadelphia Phillies, approached the final weeks of the campaign with both resignation and bitterness.

Boston had won five pennants in the decade – three straight from 1891 through 1893 and one each in 1897 and 1898. Boston’s fans were accustomed to championships, not to being 11 games out of first with just 17 games remaining.

Boston’s 1899 lineup included multiple future Hall of Famers having decent if unspectacular seasons. On the surface, there was no logical reason for the team’s lackluster performance. Their regular catcher, Marty Bergen, however, was having a troubling season, and in July briefly abandoned the team. Many Boston players blamed him for their woes. “In their eyes it was as much his fault that the championship had been lost or, at least, as good as lost,” Sporting Life reported.1

Heading into the final week of September, Bergen left the team again and Boston’s chances of catching first-place Brooklyn seemed remote at best.

It was onto this scene that William Joseph “Bill” Ging, a 5-foot-10 newcomer from Elmira, New York, entered. Ging, a 27-year-old right-handed pitcher whom the Boston Globe described as a “side wheeler,”2 had two successful Connecticut State League seasons under his wing, and was eager for his major-league debut with the Beaneaters, scheduled for Monday, September 25 at the Polo Grounds in New York.

That week, New York City was agog over the coming weekend’s giant welcome-home celebration for Admiral George Dewey, the hero of the Spanish-American War’s Battle of Manila Bay. The city planned to make the celebration the largest in its history, including a parade of ships on Friday the 29th and a huge parade on land on Saturday the 30th. Colorful patriotic decorations covered the city.3 The Boston club observed the decorations as they headed to the Polo Grounds for their afternoon game, and second baseman Bobby Lowe was “a very busy man all the morning, taking snapshots of the Dewey decorations.”4

Amid the pageantry, the Polo Grounds was the sport’s biggest stage, and while the New York team Ging was scheduled to face that day was not yet the Giants team that would be the toast of baseball within a few seasons, they had their share of stars eager to feast on a raw rookie pitcher. George Davis, for example, led the Giants in hitting with a .337 batting average and was widely recognized as one of the game’s top stars. “Many ball players regard him as the best shortstop in the business,” wrote The Sporting News.5

Boston manager Frank Selee called on rookie Billy Sullivan to be Ging’s catcher. Nineteen-year-old catcher John George Eby, also on trial with Boston, sat on the bench in uniform as he and Ging watched New York starter Ed Doheny hold Boston scoreless in the top of the first, stranding Chick Stahl at second.

Ging strode to the mound and prepared to face the New York hitters before a lively crowd of 2,000. “A few jokes were cracked about his name when he went into the box,” Sporting Life reported of Ging, “but he clearly showed there was nothing in a name by the work he did.”6

Although the temperature was a warm 75 degrees, a blustery wind blew in from center as Ging struggled with leadoff hitter George Van Haltren, walking him to open the game. It was a shaky start, but Giants third baseman Tom O’Brien followed with a sharp grounder to third baseman Jimmy Collins, who turned it into a 5-4-3 double play. One imagines Collins tongue-in-cheek telling Ging to “keep up the good work, kid” as the infielders tossed the ball around the horn. Finding his rhythm, Ging retired Davis for the third out. His first major-league inning was in the books.

Both starters got out of frequent jams with the help of clutch fielding. In the second, Ging retired Jack Doyle and Kid Gleason before walking Jack Warner and giving up an infield single to Tom Fleming. Up stepped Ging’s former New London teammate Pete Woodruff, and he grounded the ball to third, where Collins again made a great stop, forcing Fleming at second and giving Ging another shutout inning.

Boston took a 1-0 lead in the third when Fred Tenney hit a triple over the head of left fielder Van Haltren and scored on a single by Charlie Kuhns. Meanwhile, Ging remained “as cool and collected as a veteran, and mixed his balls up in a commendable style,” Sporting Life reported. “The hardest hitters of the New Yorks could not do anything with him.”7

Ging held the 1-0 lead with his “assortment of shoots,”8 until the sixth when, with two outs, Gleason hit a sharp single and took third on an infield single by Warner. With Tom Fleming at bat, Warner broke for second. Catcher Sullivan’s throw into the stiff wind failed to catch Warner, and allowed Gleason to score the tying run. It was a veteran trick and a rookie mistake. Ging then struck Fleming out to end the inning tied 1-1.

Ging helped himself in the top of the seventh, successfully sacrificing runners to second and third, setting up Tenney for an RBI single to left and a 2-1 lead. He then retired the Giants in order in the bottom of the inning.

Darkness approached as the Giants faced Ging in the eighth down 2-1. George Davis led off the inning and was called safe at first on a close infield play. Boston protested and the “fans howled”9 as Jack Doyle reached first on another infield single, moving Davis to second and setting the table for the 32-year-old Kid Gleason. Gleason “was, without doubt, the gamest and most spirited ball player I ever saw,” recalled John McGraw. “He could lick his weight in wildcats and would prove it at the drop of a hat.”10

A switch-hitter batting from the left side, Gleason started the at-bat by twice attempting to advance the runners, but failed to bunt Ging’s pitches in fair territory. With two strikes, the fierce veteran prepared to swing away. Davis, the team’s leading basestealer, led off second and looked forward to scoring the tying run.

Ging delivered the pitch, and Gleason “smashed the ball plumb on the trademark,” wrote the Boston Globe, ripping it “on a straight line” to the outfield.11 It seemed to the New Yorkers that at least one run would score on the hit, possibly two. “Gleason whacked the ball to right field apparently out of Stahl’s reach,” reported the New York Sun.12

The crowd rose expectantly, Ging watched helplessly, and the runners raced around the bases. Seemingly out of nowhere, right fielder Stahl got a jump on the ball, made a grand run, reached far forward, and caught the ball with his gloved hand at full speed. “Chick shot out that right duke and balanced the ball like a prize juggler,” wrote the Boston Globe.13 The “remarkable one-hand catch by Stahl saved the game for Boston,” said Sporting Life.14

Ging was not out of the woods, however, as Davis and Doyle raced back to their bases before Stahl’s throw could double either of them up. This was just the first out. Ging secured the second out when Warner hit a grounder to shortstop that forced Doyle at second. Now he faced runners on the corners with two outs.

One imagines that the Boston infielders immediately reminded catcher Sullivan what happened in the sixth inning when New York scored after drawing a throw to second in the stiff wind. This time, when Warner broke for second, Sullivan held the ball. Ging then finished the job by coaxing a groundball to second from Fleming, shutting down the Giants for the final time and earning a 2-1 victory. His major-league trial was wildly successful. Sporting Life noted, “Few newcomers ever made a better debut than Pitcher Ging.”15

Ging’s victory helped spark Boston to a late-season winning streak; the team won 12 of its final 17 games to jump one game ahead of Philadelphia and finish in second place, eight games behind Brooklyn.

In a normal season, Ging’s masterful trial performance would have placed him in perfect position to earn a major-league roster spot in 1900. Unfortunately, it was far from a normal season, since following the 1899 campaign, the National League contracted from 12 teams to eight, significantly limiting the number of roster spots. Ging returned to the minors and pitched for several more professional seasons, but never again in the major leagues.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Baseball-Reference.com.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information.

Portions excerpted from:

Brewster, William H. That Lively Railroad Town: Waverly, New York and the Making of Modern Baseball, 1899-1901 (Eugene, Oregon: Luminare Press, 2020).

Notes

1 “Brooklyn Budget,” Sporting Life, October 21, 1899: 9.

2 “Troubles of a Manager,” Boston Globe, September 25, 1899: 2.

3 “Details for Dewey Fete,” New York Times, September 10, 1899: 4.

4 “Echoes of the Game,” Boston Globe, September 26, 1899: 5.

5 National Baseball Hall of Fame Almanac, 2014 Edition: 128.

6 “Hub Happenings,” Sporting Life, October 7, 1899: 4.

7 “Hub Happenings.”

8 “Good Game This!” Boston Globe, September 26, 1899: 2.

9 “Good Game This!”

10 Dan Lindner, “Kid Gleason,” SABR BioProject.

11 “Good Game This!”

12 “Boston 2: New York 1,” New York Sun, September 26, 1899: 8.

13 “Good Game This!”

14 “Games Played Monday Sept. 25,” Sporting Life, September 30, 1899: 3.

15 “Hub Happenings.”