September 4, 1923: All smiles: Sad Sam Jones tosses no-hitter for Yankees

Skipper Miller Huggins’s Yankees had rolled over competition all season long and were cruising to their third straight pennant. Owners of the best record in baseball (81-43), the Yankees were 13 games ahead of the second-place Cleveland Indians and shut down opponents with a staff that eventually led the league in team ERA (3.62). Blessed with five legitimate aces, including Bullet Joe Bush, Bob Shawkey, Herb Pennock, and Waite Hoyt, Hug called on 30-year-old right-hander Sad Sam Jones to take the mound in the third game of a four-game series against the Philadelphia Athletics at Shibe Park.

Jones had emerged on the national stage five years earlier, winning 16 games in his first full season and helping the Boston Red Sox capture the pennant and 1918 World Series. Since then his career had been defined by inconsistencies. After two down seasons, he won 23 for the Red Sox in 1921, and was then shipped along with Bush and Everett Scott to the Yankees in a blockbuster trade for four players and $100,000. Jones split his 26 decisions in 1922, posted a staff-high 3.67 ERA and was relegated to bullpen duty in the Yankees’ loss to the New York Giants in the World Series.

A rubber-armed hurler, Jones got out to a hot start in ’23, posting a 14-6 record by the end of July. “Jones is the stylist among American League pitchers,” gushed longtime nemesis Ty Cobb. “He has the ideal delivery. He is free, pitches with the slightest effort. Jones has everything in his assortment of foolers, a good fast ball, fast breaking curves and a fine change of pace.”1 Overwork may have contributed to Jones’s poor August, during which his ERA bloated to 5.72 while opponents batted .327. His start against the seventh-place A’s (52-70) was undoubtedly an audition for a start in the fall classic. To oppose Sad Sam, Connie Mack, the A’s owner-skipper since the founding of the AL in 1901, sent Bob Hasty, a 27-year-old right-hander, whose 12-12 slate improved his career numbers to 27-47.

A beautiful late summer day with temperatures in the 80s drew 5,000 spectators to Shibe Park for a Tuesday afternoon of the national pastime. Hasty entered the game with the AL’s fourth highest ERA (4.58); however, his performance would have been the story of the game had his teammates mustered any offense again Jones. The robust 6-foot-3, 210-pound Georgian held the Yankees to just seven hits, three of which came in the fateful third. Fred Hofmann led off with a walk and moved to third on Scott’s single. Jones’s infield tapper moved Scott up a station. Former A’s center fielder Whitey Witt spanked a single to deep center to drive in what proved to be the game’s only runs, as Hofmann and Scott easily scored. After Joe Dugan popped up, Babe Ruth (leading the majors at the time with a .393 batting average and pacing the AL with 32 home runs) singled, and it appeared as through the vaunted Yankee sluggers might blow the game open, but third baseman Sammy Hale made what the New York Times described as a “classy stop” on Wally Pipp’s sharp grounder to third base to end the threat.2 Hasty otherwise kept the Bronx Bombers off balance, surrendering just one extra-base hit, a leadoff double by Bob Meusel in the fourth.

In a career that spanned 22 seasons (1914-1935), 647 appearances, including 487 starts, 229 wins, and 36 shutouts, Jones pitched to contact and relied on a baffling delivery and changing speeds to confuse hitters instead of brute power. He also occasionally struggled with control, so it was no big deal when he issued a one-out walk to Chick Galloway in the first. Jones set down the next 21 batters.

With one out in the bottom of the eighth, Frank Welch smashed a “scorching grounder right plumb into Scott’s chest,” reported sportswriter Jack Farrell of the New York Daily News.3 According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the hard-hit ball bounced out of the shortstop’s hand first, then hit his chest; though Scott scooped up the ball, his throw to first was late and Welch was safe.4 “Samuel was visibly nervous at this break of luck,” continued Farrell, and for good reason.5 The scoreboard at the ballpark displayed neither hits nor errors. “The ball might have been given as a hit or tabulated as an error,” opined the Philadelphia Inquirer.6 Unaware of the official scoring, Jones induced Jimmy Dykes to hit a grounder forcing Welch at second and then ended the frame on Cy Perkins’s fly out to center field. When the pitcher returned to the dugout between innings, “he displayed a broad grim,” recounted Farrell, when he discovered that Welch’s smash had been ruled an error to keep his no-hitter intact.7

“[F]ame beckoned its clammy hand to Jones,” wrote the Inquirer in the poetic parlance of the time, as Jones took the mound in the bottom of the ninth, three outs from what newspapers called the hall of fame, a mythical Valhalla of baseball eternity.8 He retired Beauty McGowan, pinch-hitting for Hasty, on a roller to keystone sacker Aaron Ward, then dispatched Wid Matthews on another grounder, this time to short. To the plate stepped Galloway, who hoped to end Jones’s quest to become just the second Yankee to hurl a no-hitter, joining George Mogridge, who tossed one against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on April 24, 1917. Galloway, shunning written or unwritten baseball codes, tried to catch Jumping Joe Dugan napping and bunted down the third-base side. But Dugan was ready for a tricky play, charged the bunt, and “ just managed to throw out the runner by a step,” noted the Times, which added that “Jones had a close call.”9 The game was completed in 1 hour and 23 minutes.10

“There was no wild demonstration by the Yankee players,” reported the Daily News.11 For the fans, however, it was a different story, and many of them ran onto the field to congratulate the hurler.12 Jones made his way to the dugout, where the 5-foot-5, 130-pound Huggins shook his hand and offered a few words of praise as did his teammates, and even some of the A’s players.

The Inquirer gushed that Jones’s no-hitter “capsheafs a career for the season that has raised Jones from the depths to a pinnacle of success.”13 Jones faced 29 batters, walked one and did not register a strikeout. The only strikeout victim of the game was Babe Ruth.

Jones’s no-hitter augured a productive final month of the season for the Ohio native. In his next outing, six days later, Jones faced only 31 batters, tossing a two-hitter to beat the Red Sox, 8-1, at Yankee Stadium. Sad Sam won five of six decisions with a 2.20 ERA in September to conclude the season with a team-best 21 wins (along with a 3.63 ERA and 8 losses), and joined Bush (19-15), Hoyt (17-9), Pennock (19-6), and Shawkey (16-11) by logging well in excess of 200 innings.14

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com, and SABR.org.

NOTES

1 “Sam Jones in Hall of Fame,” Reading (Pennsylvania) Times, September 5, 1923: 6.

2 “Sam Jones Pitches No-Hit, No-Run Game,” New York Times, September 5, 1923: 11.

3 Jack Farrell, “Athletics Get but Two Men to First,” (New York) Daily News, September 5, 1923: 22.

4 “Jones Hurls No-Hit Game Against Macks,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 5, 1923: 20.

5 Farrell.

6 “Jones Hurls No-Hit Game Against Macks.”

7 Farrell

8 Farrell.

9 “Sam Jones Pitches No-Hit, No-Run Game.”

10 Farrell.

11 Farrell.

12 “Jones Hurls No-Hit Game Against Macks.”

13 “Jones Hurls No-Hit Game Against Macks.”

14 The five Yankee starters, Bush (275⅔), Hoyt (238⅔), Pennock (238⅓), Shawkey (258⅔), and Jones (243), combined to start 143 of the team’s 152 games, completed 97 of them, and logged an astonishing 1,254⅓ innings (90.8 percent of the team’s total). So much for relievers.