September 30, 1922: Eddie Rommel wins 27th game for 65-win A’s team

In a career that included 13 seasons as a major-league pitcher and 22 more as an American League umpire, Eddie Rommel proved himself to be both accomplished and unconventional. As a pitcher with the Philadelphia Athletics, Rommel was an early master of an unconventional pitch – the knuckleball – and the winner of 171 games. In the 54 years that the team played in Philadelphia (1901-54), only Hall of Famers Eddie Plank (284 wins), Lefty Grove (195), and Chief Bender (193) won more games for the A’s franchise. As an American League umpire from 1938 to 1959, Rommel worked in two World Series and six All-Star Games. He was unconventional as an ump as well. On April 18, 1956, at Washington’s Griffith Stadium, Rommel – umpiring at third base in a game between the hometown Senators and the New York Yankees – became the first major-league umpire to work a game while wearing eyeglasses. He continued to wear glasses through the end of his umpiring career, though only in night games in which he was working the bases.

Rommel’s best season as a player came in 1922. Fifty years before another Philadelphia pitcher, Steve Carlton, amazed the baseball world by winning 27 games for a Phillies club that won only 59 games all year, Rommel posted a major-league-best 27 wins for a seventh-place A’s team with a 65-89 record. Rommel also led the American League in games pitched that year with 51, and ranked in the league’s top five in innings pitched (fourth, 294.0), complete games (tied for fifth, 22), and games finished in relief (tied for fifth, 16). There were no Cy Young Awards in 1922, but in the American League Most Valuable Player voting, Rommel finished second behind George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns, who batted .420 that year.

Typically for Rommel, he finished the 1922 season in unconventional fashion. Due to postponements, the Athletics ended the year with three consecutive home doubleheaders against the Washington Senators. Rommel worked a game – and got a decision – on each of the three days. On Thursday, September 28, Rommel started game one for the A’s, but was lifted after allowing five hits, five runs, and two homers in the first inning. He took his 13th loss of the year in the 9-6 Senators victory. On Friday, September 29, Rommel entered game one in the 12th inning with the score tied, 2-2. He allowed a run on a homer by rookie Pete Lapan, but wound up as the winning pitcher when the A’s scored two runs in the bottom half of the inning.

Pennsylvania law prohibited Sunday baseball in 1922, so the Athletics finished the year with a Saturday twin bill against the Senators. Rommel’s victory on Friday was his 26th of the year, tying him with Joe Bush of the Yankees for the major-league lead in pitcher wins. Another victory would give Rommel the outright lead in wins. After Washington took Saturday’s first game, 7-3, A’s manager Connie Mack selected Rommel to start game two. His opponent was left-hander Ray Francis, who – like Rommel – had started one of the games on Thursday. Francis had lasted only 1⅔ innings in Thursday’s second game, allowing seven hits and 10 runs (six earned) in a 12-5 defeat that dropped his season record to 7-17.

The Washington lineup that Rommel faced on Saturday featured three Hall of Famers – Bucky Harris, Sam Rice, and Goose Goslin (though Harris would be enshrined as a manager). Washington’s starters also included two of the better players of the era, first baseman Joe Judge and shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh; like Harris, Rice, and Goslin, both Judge and Peckinpaugh would be regular starters for the Senators teams that would win American League pennants in 1924-25. The Athletics’ lineup in Saturday’s second game featured no players who would be enshrined in Cooperstown, but it included several players of note along with Rommel. Like Rommel, right fielder Bing Miller and third baseman Jimmy Dykes would last long enough to become contributing members of the A’s AL championship clubs of 1929-31. Cy Perkins, a reserve catcher for the 1929-30 champions, would have a 17-year major-league career. Thirty-five-year-old left fielder Tillie Walker was nearing the finish of a 13-year career that would end the next year, but he was enjoying his greatest season. Walker entered the game with a career-high 36 home runs, second in the American League behind Ken Williams of the Browns (39). Neither the Senators nor A’s would use a substitute in Saturday’s season finale.

The Senators established a pattern in the early innings of the game, getting two hits in each of the first three frames but failing to score a run. Rommel drove in the game’s first run with a single to center in the bottom of the third. The A’s then broke the game open with four runs on five hits an inning later; a bases-loaded triple by Dykes was the key blow.

Washington finally got on the board with single runs in the fifth and sixth innings, but despite getting two hits in six of the first seven innings, those were the Senators’ only runs until the eighth. The A’s, meanwhile, scored again in the bottom of the fifth on Walker’s 37th and final home run of the season. At the time, Walker’s total was the fifth-highest home-run total by a player in a single season, topped only by Babe Ruth (59 homers in 1921, 54 in 1920), Rogers Hornsby (42 in 1922), and Ken Williams (39 in 1922). Though he is largely forgotten today, Walker ranked in the all-time top 10 in career home runs (tied for seventh with 118) when his major-league career ended after the 1923 season.

The Senators scored twice in the eighth inning to get within two runs (6-4), but the A’s scored a run of their own in the bottom half, and Rommel closed out Philadelphia’s 7-4 victory an inning later. Remarkably, he had allowed a total of 17 hits in the game, but no more than two in any inning except for Washington’s three-hit eighth.

Rommel’s career would last for another decade, and he would earn fame for yet another game in which he took home a victory despite allowing a high number of hits. On July 10, 1932, the A’s – still prohibited from playing home games on Sundays – traveled to Cleveland to play a single road game in the midst of a homestand. Mack had brought along only two pitchers, and when starter Lew Krausse allowed three runs in the first inning, Rommel entered the game in the bottom of the second. As in the season-ending game in 1922, Rommel had pitched on each of the previous two days (two innings on Friday, three on Saturday) … and as in 1922, he proceeded to allow a high number of hits. Did he ever: The game lasted 18 innings, and Rommel, who worked the final 17, allowed a staggering 29 hits and 14 runs (13 earned) before the A’s finally prevailed, 18-17. The 29 hits allowed are still the major-league record for hits allowed by a pitcher in a single game since 1900.

That 1932 game was the 171st and final victory of Eddie Rommel’s career. It was also the fifth time in a major-league career which included exactly 501 games pitched that Rommel allowed at least 15 hits in a game. Remarkably, he was the winning pitcher in each of those five games.

SOURCES

Deale, Tim. “Eddie Rommel.” SABR BioProject biography, sabr.org/bioproj/person/333594e9; accessed August 18, 2018.

“Mackmen Wind Up with Even Split,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1, 1922.

Neyer, Rob. “Eddie Rommel” chapter from Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (New York: Fireside, 2004), 75-80.

Baseball-Reference.com/boxes/PHA/PHA192209302.shtml

Retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1922/B09302PHA1922.htm

Statspass.com