September 27, 1924: Rochester no-hits Syracuse for the second time in a month

Bill Moore’s major-league career was brief and unfortunate. Pitching in relief for the Detroit Tigers on April 15, 1925, Moore began the sixth inning by walking the only three Chicago White Sox batters he faced. He was removed from the game and never appeared in the majors again. Reliever Lil Stoner allowed two of the runners to score, saddling Moore with a lifetime ERA of infinity.1

It marked a complete turnaround from September 27, 1924, when the lanky righty from Corning, New York, turned in almost the exact opposite pitching performance for the Rochester Tribe of the Double-A International League.2 Instead of allowing every opposing batter to reach base, he allowed almost none. Moore threw a near-perfect nine-inning no-hitter against the Syracuse Stars, marred only by one infield error that allowed a Stars batter to reach first base.

To add insult to injury for Syracuse, Moore’s almost-perfecto marked the second time in less than a month that a Rochester pitcher had held the Stars hitless. Moore’s teammate Francis Karpp had turned the trick in the seven-inning second game of a September 1 doubleheader, beating the Stars, 8-0. Karpp yielded one base on balls.3

As of September 27, the IL season had two days left, and both upstate New York teams were playing out the string.4 Frank “Shag” Shaughnessy – Syracuse’s manager since 1921 – hadn’t yet come up with his four-team “Shaughnessy Plan” playoff system, which the IL adopted nine years later.5 With no playoffs, the regular-season champion held all bragging rights, and the Baltimore Orioles’ 114-47 record put them head and shoulders above all other IL teams. Rochester was in a distant tie for third at 82-83, while Syracuse was tied for fifth at 78-81.6 (Historians Bill Weiss and Marshall Wright later ranked the 1924 Orioles the fifth-best minor-league team of all time.7)

Moore, age 22, went 16-14 with a 3.45 ERA in 40 appearances for the Tribe that year. He was the team’s third starter as measured by wins, trailing Walter Beall (25-8) and Jack Wisner (18-13.)8 Moore had come close to a no-hitter against the Orioles on August 23, yielding only a seventh-inning single and three late walks in a 4-0 win.9 Rochester’s manager was George Stallings, a decade removed from leading the 1914 Boston Braves to an upset victory in the World Series.

Notable names in the Rochester batting order included center fielder Jocko Conlan, whose later umpiring career landed him in the Hall of Fame; first baseman Fred Merkle, a .351 hitter at age 35 in his fourth season in Rochester; and third baseman Harry Lunte, the player who replaced the Cleveland Indians’ Ray Chapman on August 16, 1920, when Chapman was killed by a pitch by the New York Yankees’ Carl Mays.

Another noteworthy member of the 1924 Tribe was Harry Heitmann, who divided his 11-year pro career between the pitcher’s mound, first base, and the outfield. By coincidence, Heitmann was another member of the Infinity ERA Club: In his only major-league appearance pitching for the Brooklyn Robins on July 27, 1918, he yielded four straight hits and was removed without recording an out.10

Righty Fred Frankhouse got the start for Syracuse. Frankhouse later spent 13 seasons in the major leagues, winning 17 games for the 1934 Boston Braves and making the National League All-Star team. But in 1924 he was 20 years old and in his third minor-league season, still three years away from his big-league debut. Frankhouse went 15-17 with a 4.70 ERA for Syracuse, tying him for third in wins behind Heinie Meine’s and Art Reinhart’s 17.

The names in Syracuse’s batting order are less remembered a century later but include several former big-leaguers. Dutch Wetzel, a .320 hitter and a former St. Louis Brown, started in left field. Two former Detroit Tigers entered the game later. Slicker Parks, who also won 15 games for Syracuse, relieved Frankhouse in the sixth inning and pitched the rest of the way. And Red McKee, a .301 hitter in 112 major-league games, pinch-hit for Parks in the ninth inning.11

Perhaps the best-known name on the 1924 Syracuse roster had been gone for several weeks on September 27. After hitting .271 in 140 games, 20-year-old infielder Tommy Thevenow was purchased by the St. Louis Cardinals on September 3, beginning a 15-season big-league career that included a World Series title with the 1926 Cardinals.

Frankhouse walked five hitters in 5⅔ innings of work, and one of those walks led directly to the game’s first run in the bottom of the third inning. With two out, shortstop Jesse Runser drew a free pass and stole second. Conlan’s single into left field scored Runser for a 1-0 Tribe lead.12 Runser, at 36, was nearing the end of an itinerant 17-season minor-league career that included three stints as a manager, but no major-league appearances.

Another rally in the fifth inning accounted for the Tribe’s other three runs. The outburst began with a walk to second baseman Eusebio González, a light-skinned Cuban who had appeared in three games with the 1918 Boston Red Sox – making him the first foreign-born Latino to play for the team.13 Two groundball outs later, left fielder Burney Griffin singled in González. Runser’s single sent Griffin to third base, and Runser took second on the throw to third. Conlan walked to load the bases. Merkle’s single scored Griffin and Runser; Conlan was thrown out trying to score.14

Parks took over on the mound for Syracuse with two out in the sixth, following two more walks by Frankhouse. He shut down the Tribe from there, allowing no hits and just one walk. “Parks … pitched almost as tight ball as William C. Moore, of Corning,” an unnamed scribe wrote in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

While Frankhouse was walking his way into trouble, Moore was dominating the Stars – with only one blot on his record. He began the third inning by striking out shortstop George Makin and third baseman George Krahe, two of his 10 strikeouts that day.15

Frankhouse was next, and hit a slow roller to González at second. “The Senor ran in slowly, very slowly. The ball seemed to bound to the right of his glove,” the Corning (New York) Evening Leader reported, adding that González would have had to make a perfect play to get the fast-running Frankhouse.16 González was given an error on the play.

Interestingly, one newspaper on hand didn’t see it that way. The Syracuse Journal had to go to press in mid-game, and included a play-by-play roundup that was complete through the sixth inning. The Journal’s report of the third inning said Frankhouse “scratched a hit” to González, and summarized the inning’s outcome as “no runs, one hit, no errors.”17

The Corning newspaper, however, reported that the 500 or so fans on hand were cheering for a no-hitter in the eighth and ninth innings. This tells us that González’s play must have been scored – and announced – as an error, since the crowd knew late in the game that no hits had been made. It appears that the “hit” reported in the Journal was most likely a reporter’s mistake.18

Only two Stars batters hit the ball hard – both in the seventh inning and both directly back at Moore, who fielded both balls and threw to first base for outs.19 Only one tried bunting for a hit: Syracuse’s final batter, first baseman Bill Swansboro, popped his attempt back to the mound.20 “It was one of the highest bunts ever seen here,” the Democrat and Chronicle summarized. “The original intention of Mr. Swansboro was to drag one, but he crossed himself.”21 The game ended in 1 hour and 40 minutes.

The Rochester team sold Moore to Detroit on November 15, and Moore made his only big-league appearance the following spring.22 He was returned to Rochester about a week later and remained there through 1926.23 Three seasons with Newark in the IL were followed by brief stops in several cities in 1930 and 1931. He appeared in 10 games with Williamsport in the Class B New York-Penn League in 1932 and then retired for good.

At his final stop in Williamsport, he briefly recaptured his form of 1924. On May 30, 1932, Moore held the Hazleton (Pennsylvania) team hitless for eight innings. He surrendered three ninth inning hits but held on for a 7-3 win.24 After baseball, Moore became a police captain; he died in 1984 at age 81.25

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

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 the September 28, 1924, editions of the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle published a box score.

Photo of Bill Moore from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 17, 1924: 40.

Notes

1 “Infinity” because with no outs, there’s nothing to divide the two runs against.

2 According to Retrosheet, Moore was one of three players born in Corning to reach the majors as of the end of the 2023 season. The others were also pitchers: Glenn Spencer (born 1905; pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants between 1928 and 1933) and Greg Keagle (born 1971; pitched for the Detroit Tigers from 1996-98).

3 “Karpp Pitches No-Hit, No-Run Game Against Syracuse,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, September 2, 1924: 24. Karpp pitched for 13 professional seasons between 1916 and 1930, peaking at Double A – at that time the top level of the minors. He pitched for Syracuse during part of the 1917 season.

4 The season ended on September 28. International League final standings published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 29, 1924: 24.

5 Charlie Bevis, “Frank ‘Shag’ Shaughnessy,” SABR Biography Project, accessed November 2023.

6 IL standings as printed in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 27, 1924: 24.

7 Alan Cohen, “Baltimore’s Forgotten Dynasty: The 1919-25 Baltimore Orioles of the International League,” The National Pastime: A Bird’s-Eye View of Baltimore (Society for American Baseball Research: 2020). Notable members of the 1924 Orioles included future Hall of Famer Lefty Grove and George Earnshaw, Grove’s future teammate on the Philadelphia Athletics pitching staff.

8 Moore was the team’s second starter as measured by ERA. Beall posted a 2.76 ERA, Moore’s was 3.45, and Wisner’s was 4.58.

9 “Bill Moore Blanks Dunn’s Birds with Only One Hit,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 24, 1924: 40.

10 Heitmann did not appear in Moore’s no-hitter. He split his 1924 season between teams in Rochester and Waterbury, Connecticut, and newspaper records indicate he’d been sold to Waterbury by the end of July. “Breezy Bits By Ben,” Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette, July 26, 1924: 8.

11 The box score published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle incorrectly reported that McKee pinch-hit in the eighth inning.

12 Unless otherwise noted, all play-by-play information in this game account is based on “Bill Moore Hurls Hitless Game to Beat Stars, 4-0,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 28, 1924: 44.

13 Bill Nowlin, “Eusebio González,” SABR Biography Project, accessed November 2023.

14 “Tribe Gets Jump on Stars in Second Game,” Syracuse (New York) Journal, September 27, 1924: 1. It seems unusual that Conlan would have tried to score from first on a single, but available game information does not shed further light on this play.

15 “Ovation for Corning Youth at Rochester,” Corning (New York) Evening Leader, September 29, 1924: 8.

16 “Ovation for Corning Youth at Rochester.”

17 “Tribe Gets Jump on Stars in Second Game.”

18 “Ovation for Corning Youth at Rochester.” The game story in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle also makes no mention of a call on the play being reversed.

19 “Ovation for Corning Youth at Rochester”; “Bill Moore Hurls Hitless Game to Beat Stars, 4-0.” The batters in question were Wetzel and second baseman Garde Gislason.

20 The identification of Swansboro as the game’s final batter is extrapolated from the box score and the Rochester paper’s game story. The Democrat and Chronicle reported that eighth-place hitter George Krahe struck out for the first out of the ninth. The box score indicates that the pitcher’s spot was next; McKee pinch-hit unsuccessfully for Parks. That would have brought leadoff hitter Swansboro to the plate with two out, and the Democrat and Chronicle specified that Swansboro’s bunted pop to the mound took place in the ninth.

21 “Bill Moore Hurls Hitless Game to Beat Stars, 4-0.”

22 “Bill Moore Sold by Rochester Club to Detroit Nine,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, November 16, 1924: 43.

23 “Notes,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 23, 1925: 28.

24 “Mountaineers Drop Three out of Four Games to End Home Stay; Near Victim of No-Hit Contest,” Hazleton (Pennsylvania) Standard-Sentinel, May 31, 1932: 8.

25 Al Mallette, “Sunday Brunch,” Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette Sunday Telegram, January 29, 1984: 7C.