Total Baseball (1994 Edition)

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$Unique_ID{BAS00053} $Pretitle{} $Title{Streaks and Feats: Part 2} $Subtitle{} $Author{ Kavanagh, Jack} $Subject{Streaks Feats Successive Pitching Rube Marquard Johnson Smokey Joe Wood Keefe Grove Rowe Hubbell Dean Face Consecutive Base Hits Delahanty Gettman Speaker Higgins Winning Streaks McGraw Merkle} $Log{ Cobb, Ty*0014101.scf Sisler, George*0053401.scf Johnson, Walter*0030701.scf Marquard, Rube*0037301.scf Grove, Lefty*0025601.scf Hubbell, Carl*0029101.scf} Total Baseball: The Highlights of the Game Streaks and Feats: Part 2 Jack Kavanagh Successive Pitching Victories The 1912 baseball season produced a bumper crop of pitchers winning successive victories. Rube Marquard of the New York Giants topped everyone by running up a total of 19. This tied the record set by Tim Keefe, also of New York. Keefe had won his games in 1888, when the pitching distance was only fifty feet between pitcher and batter, but he had won them in a row and that is the measurement of this feat. The present distance of sixty feet, six inches (actually, this is only about 55 feet from the pitcher's point of release) was set in 1893, Keefe's last season. Marquard's mark remains unmatched within the confines of a single season. The record for consecutive wins beginning in the midst of one season and extending into the next season is held by Carl Hubbell, whose 24 consecutive victories, starting in 1936 and continuing into 1937, tops the list. However, 1912 produced more than just Marquard's record. It also produced a new American League record and an immediate challenger to it. Even while Rube Marquard was engaged in his run in the National League, Walter Johnson, almost concurrently, was setting the American League record at 16. And by the time he was stopped, another streak was under way, this one by Smokey Joe Wood of the Boston Red Sox. No one could ask for a better matchup in 1912 than the one which brought Walter Johnson, the record holder, to the mound at Fenway Park to face Joe Wood the challenger. Johnson was the premier pitcher in the American League and its strikeout king. Wood had dazzled the baseball world while en route to a 34-5 season, with 10 shutouts. He won three more games in the 1912 World Series. Then he injured his arm and never returned to his single-season pinnacle. Walter Johnson, himself a 32-game winner in 1912, had broken the former American League record of 14 straight, set by Jack Chesbro in 1904. By winning his sixteenth straight game on August 23, he had set a new league mark and had his sights on the brand-new record of Rube Marquard. The New York lefthander had won his 19 by July 3. Johnson never caught Marquard. Johnson was a victim of both bad luck and a scoring rule which today would not have cost him a loss. He lost a game in relief, taking over in the seventh inning of a tie game. There were two runners on base, and before Johnson could get the side out, one of them scored the winning run. Today the loss would be charged to the starting pitcher, Tom Hughes, who had allowed the runner to get on base. At that time the loss went against whoever was pitching when the winning run scored. Even so, in 1912 the scorer's decision was denounced by the press and sympathetic fans. However, Ban Johnson, not only president of the American League but its iron-fisted founder, decreed the loss be placed against Walter Johnson's record, and there it remains forever. He had been stopped at 16. When the 1912 penchant for pitchers winning consecutive victories identified the next challenger as Smokey Joe Wood of the pennant-bound Boston Red Sox, Johnson was called upon to stop him personally. The schedule brought the Washington Senators to Fenway Park to play the Red Sox, and the management was well aware they had a great gate attraction. Johnson was asked to pitch a day sooner so he would face Wood. He was glad to do it. Whatever the capacity of Fenway Park in 1912, it was far exceeded when, on a weekday, over 30,000 baseball fans crowded the park. The crowd overflowed the stands. In fact, the players could not sit in their dugouts. Instead, they sat on chairs arranged in front of the throngs that stood just outside the baselines. Thousands more people stood in the outfield, behind ropes, reducing the area for the great Red Sox outfield to cover. Tris Speaker, Duffy Lewis, and Harry Hooper would not be able to roam back to catch deep fly balls. These would be automatic doubles if they reached the crowd herded behind the ropes. Walter Johnson held the American League record, a string of 16 straight victories. Joe Wood had drawn nearer to Johnson's mark in his last start, beating New York on September 2 for his thirteenth win without a loss during the streak. Today he was after his fourteenth straight, Chesbro's old mark, and Walter Johnson didn't want him to get it. Unless Johnson himself stopped Wood, his own record, and possibly Marquard's, were in danger. The game lived up to expectations. It was a pitcher's battle. Great defensive plays snuffed out rallies, and both pitchers stopped scoring threats with clutch strikeouts. A scoreless tie was broken in the sixth inning, when Tris Speaker hit a fly ball that reached the roped-back crowd for a ground-rule double and Duffy Lewis hit an opposite-field double down the right field foul line. It just eluded the grab of Danny Moeller and Speaker scored. And that was it. The game ended 1-0 as Walter Johnson lost another game in which his team failed to get him any runs. He lost 65 games during his career when his team was shut out. When Wood pitched next, in Chicago, he was not in top form but held a 5-3 lead going into the bottom of the ninth. When the first two White Sox batters reached base with hits, manager Jake Stahl replaced Wood with reliever Charles "Sea Lion" Hall. A sacrifice fly made the final score 5-4, but Hall retired the White Sox without further damage and Joe Wood was within one game of tying Walter Johnson. The Red Sox rode on to St. Louis in Pullman cars for a game on September 15, and Joe Wood pitched another strong game, a 2-1 victory in eight innings to tie Johnson's record. Darkness caused the game to be called after Wood himself had scored the go-ahead run in the top of the eighth inning. It all came to an end on September 20 in Detroit. Wood failed to break Walter Johnson's mark. He went the distance but mostly on the sufferance of manager Jake Stahl. Although two of the Tigers' runs were unearned, the 6-4 final score indicated Joe Wood's fastball lacked its usual smoke that day. The Marquard Inheritance When Rube Marquard wrote his way into the record books in 1912, with 19 consecutive victories, he established a benchmark which has been approached but never equaled, or excelled, since that time. Although Walter Johnson's American League mark, itself never beaten, took on extra importance because of the affection and awe he inspired in baseball fans, Marquard set the standard for all others to challenge. The Johnson-Wood confrontation excited the imagination, and other challenges have created their own temporary focus, but always there stands the record of Marquard. It is the pinnacle toward which others climb and never reach, on a single-season, starting pitcher basis. It has only been exceeded by joining the end of one season to the start of the next. Perhaps even more than the way Walter Johnson was revered in the American League, Rube Marquard's teammate, Christy Mathewson, overshadowed everyone. Marquard's record was the sort of achievement Matty should have had. Until 1912 all the heroics on the Giants' staff had been his. Rube's emergence took everyone by surprise; he was still living down the onerous nickname "the $11,000 Lemon." Just a kid pitcher, only eighteen, when the Giants bought him from Indianapolis where he had won 28 games in 1908, Marquard had been a disappointment until the 1912 season. Then he began his streak with his first start of the season and, as he added to it, he began to attract favorable attention for the first time. When he won his sixth game, he exceeded any previous high; when he won the tenth game, he had won more than he had in his first two seasons combined. Rube Marquard had been dubbed "the $11,000 Lemon" because John McGraw, with an eye to publicity value, had paid that much so it would top the $10,000 paid for Mike "King" Kelly when he was sold by Chicago to Boston in the previous century. In 1912, "the Lemon" turned it all around. He started right in on April 11 and didn't lose a game until July 8. Actually, under the present scoring rules, Marquard's record would total 20 consecutive victories. In a game at the Polo Grounds, McGraw inserted Rube in the eighth inning of a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers which was tied at 3-3. Marquard inherited a bases-loaded situation but stopped Zach Wheat and Jake Daubert, both to become batting champions, and retired George Cutshaw, without a run being scored. The Giants won the game in the bottom of the ninth, but the rules then gave the victory to the starting pitcher. The Giants, in 1912, were winning the middle of three successive pennants, and Marquard joined with Christy Mathewson to lead the Giants' staff. He was called "Rube," a nickname often given to lefthanders with a superior fastball. This was a tribute to Rube Waddell and had no bucolic significance: Marquard was no innocent country boy turned loose on Broadway. Marquard married a vaudeville headliner, Blossom Seeley, who was even more popular than he was. Her life story was later made into a motion picture which ignored Marquard in favor of Blossom's subsequent husband, song-and-dance man Benny Fields. However, Rube had held up his end of the vaudeville act, serving as a straight man for the comedienne and added female impersonations, in which he sang and danced as well. This too is a performance unlikely to be duplicated by a modern player. Streakers Blurred by Time Although it is convenient to separate the "modern era" of baseball from its ancient past at 1900, the better dividing line would be 1893. That year the pitcher was moved back from fifty feet to the still-prevailing sixty feet, six inches. He had been allowed to throw overhand since 1884. Until the 1890s, teams rarely used more than two principal pitchers. More open dates existed in the schedules, and two strong-armed men could carry the bulk of the work. A third pitcher, or a general substitute, could help out in doubleheaders. However, the regular duo met most occasions and had many more opportunities to reel off long strings of victories. When Tim Keefe set the mark at 19 straight, he required only seven weeks to do it. Between June 23 and August 10, 1888, he won all his starts, 17 of them complete games. He alternated on the mound with Mickey Welch, himself the owner of an impressive winning streak. In 1885 Smiling Mickey had run off 17 in a row. That had been one less than the record Hoss Radbourn set in 1884. Pitchers in those years were capable of putting together long winning streaks. Another contemporary, Jim McCormick of Chicago, won 14 in a row in 1885 and 16 straight the next year. When Keefe set his mark in 1888, the public was impressed but not stunned by its magnitude. After all, it only topped the recent mark of Radbourn's by one. The New York Giants of 1888 were the toast of the town. They were led by Jim Mutrie, who had dubbed them "my Giants," marveling at the magnitude of the star players. Such stalwarts as Roger Connor, Montgomery Ward, and Buck Ewing--all future Hall of Fame members--were in the lineup. Keefe and Welch, pitching in tandem, were also destined for Cooperstown and immortality. The Giants were easy pennant winners over Cap Anson's Chicago team. Tim Keefe began his 19-game winning streak on June 23. He had lost his previous start to yet another star pitcher, John Clarkson. Also elected to the Hall of Fame, even before Keefe and Welch, Clarkson had won 13 straight in 1885. Keefe's first win was a squeaker, 7-6, over Philadelphia. Then he marched along, and when he won his twelfth in a row, his opponent was Clarkson. During the streak Tim Keefe pitched 17 complete games. The two he failed to finish included one in which he was hit on the arm by a line drive while leading 8-3 in the sixth inning. A replacement with a name more domineering than the record he left behind, Cannonball Eddie Crane, held on for a 9-6 victory credited to Keefe. The other incomplete game would not have been added to his string by today's scoring rules. On July 16, while leading Chicago 9-0, Keefe was excused for the day after two innings. The practices of the time gave him the win. Tim Keefe's string came to an end on August 14, when his defense betrayed him and two unearned runs were the difference in a 4-2 loss. Gus Krock, of the Chicago White Stockings, was a lefthanded rookie who soon disappeared from the major leagues, but he had the satisfaction of stopping Keefe at 19. Considering the winning streaks his contemporaries had run off, it was probably thought that Keefe's record was temporary. Had it not been for the victory gained in that two-inning start, it would have been. He would have been tied with Hoss Radbourn at 18 and eclipsed when Rube Marquard reached 19 in 1912. As it is, more than a century after his feat, Tim Keefe stands beside Marquard with a total no one has surpassed. American League Record Tied It wasn't until 1931 that the lesser American League record of 16 consecutive pitching victories was challenged. Lefty Grove came very close to setting a new record in the American League and narrowly missed being the pitcher to break Marquard's mark of 19. Grove had a 31-4 season, figures which could have accommodated both record-breaking streaks. However, the luck even the best must have to sustain a long streak deserted Grove at the critical point. He was luckless in the game which would have moved him past Walter Johnson and Smokey Joe Wood, coholders of the American League mark. The 1931 Philadelphia Athletics were awesome. Connie Mack's last championship team won its third pennant in a row. Responding to Depression-related financial pressures, Mack would break up the team, selling off its stars, including Grove, who went to the Red Sox. Future Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, Al Simmons, and Grove himself were at the peak of their careers. The members of the supporting cast--Max Bishop, Jimmie Dykes, Mule Haas, Bing Miller, and others--were all excellent role players. This was a team which did not beat itself. As the season advanced into August, the Athletics were virtually coasting to a pennant. They would win 107 games and distance the runner-up New York Yankees by 13 games. Grove, pitching every fourth game and appearing in relief when needed, was on his personal roll. For the first time in many years, it appeared the American League record for consecutive victories could be broken by a pitcher. It was possible to project that Grove might go on and catch Marquard's record. There was enough time left. Lefty Grove tied the American League record on August 19 and was expected to break it four days later with his seventeenth straight win. The day the record coheld by Walter Johnson and Joe Wood since 1912 was to fall was Sunday, August 23. The St. Louis Browns, a second-division team and perennial victim, would provide only token opposition, and the unheralded Dick Coffman would be the sacrificial pitching opponent. Grove pitched with close to his usual brilliance, limiting the Browns to six hits, allowing only one run, and striking out six. However, Dick Coffman, on that particular day, outpitched Grove and shut out the Athletics with only three hits. Grove's streak came to an end at 16 straight victories. He had only joined Johnson and Wood at the top of the American League's list. Lefty Grove had never been a gracious, philosophical loser. He refused to accept defeat gracefully. He blamed the loss on the absence of Al Simmons from the lineup. True, Simmons was at home, in Milwaukee, seeing a doctor, and his replacement, Jim Moore, was far from being a sure-handed defensive player. When Moore misjudged a fly ball, which became the game-winning hit, Grove fumed that Simmons would have caught the ball. Further, he complained, Simmons, the league-leading batter, would surely have knocked in a few runs as well as preventing the Browns from scoring a tainted one. Grove complained every time he was asked about the end of his streak, and the image of Simmons idling away the afternoon, thumbing through National Geographics in a doctor's waiting room, persisted. Actually, Simmons had an infected ankle and had already been out of the lineup for a week. What made the defeat more bitter in retrospect was that Grove went on to win his next five starts. These victories would have put the record at 21, eclipsing not only the American League record but topping Marquard's all-time total of 19. (Grove won his next two starts, incidentally, with Simmons still missing from the lineup.) He did not lose until the final game of the season, on September 27. Schoolboy Rowe's Row It was only a few years later, in 1934, when the next assault was made on the American League record, now held by Lefty Grove as well as by Walter Johnson and Joe Wood. This time it was the colorful Schoolboy Rowe, blessed with a rural candor that the press found refreshing and the public fascinating, who made the run. Mickey Cochrane, Grove's former battery mate, was a first-term manager, having been sold by the Athletics to Detroit. Still a great player and catcher, Cochrane had his team headed for the pennant and Schoolboy Rowe led the way. Rowe had been a pitcher of promise and Cochrane had brought about its fulfillment. Rowe had made a slow start, splitting his first eight decisions. His inauspicious beginning offered no portent that when, on June 15, he won his fifth victory, it was the start of a record-equaling skein. During the summer months Rowe shared the spotlight with Dizzy Dean of the National League. However, while Dean was garnering the victories which would eventually reach 30 for the season, he did not string them together the way Rowe did. Rowe won his sixteenth straight game on August 26 but then ran into the barrier which had blocked other American League pitchers at that point. He joined Grove, Johnson, and Wood at the top of the list but also joined them among the frustrated who could not go past that point. Rowe stumbled from the path toward a new record on August 29, when the Tigers met the now lowly Philadelphia Athletics in a doubleheader. Gone from Connie Mack's A's were Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Al Simmons, George Earnshaw, and Rube Walberg. Only Jimmie Foxx remained from the recent championship teams. It was the second game of an August 29 doubleheader, and Rowe was far off form. He was knocked out in the sixth inning. Unlike the contentious Lefty Grove, Rowe blamed no one but himself, saying without rancor that he'd just had an off-day. He refused the alibi offered by his manager, Mickey Cochrane, who contended that the demands of the press and public on the young pitcher had produced more turmoil than Schoolboy could handle. Rowe scoffed at the idea and went on to finish the season with 24 wins. He didn't face Dizzy Dean in the 1934 World Series, but he split two decisions, as the Cardinals won a seven-game series from Detroit. Another pennant year followed for Detroit, with Rowe winning 19 games. After that a chronic arm problem hindered his career, although he lasted a long while in the major leagues, winning 158 games, with a .610 winning average, over fifteen years. Carl Hubbell's Fabulous Streak When one adds the start of one season to the end of the preceding one, one finds a 17-game streak for Cleveland's Johnny Allen in 1936-1937 and another for Baltimore's Dave McNally in 1969-1970. But in this area Carl Hubbell claims all the records. In the quirky way that records for consecutive victories by pitchers seem to come almost simultaneously, the same two seasons which provided Johnny Allen's 17 straight wins, also produced one of the most fabulous feats of all time. As had been the case with 1912, there was a magic about 1936-1937. Carl Hubbell, between July 17, 1936, and May 27, 1937, won 24 games in a row. He won his last 16 decisions in 1936 and added 8 more victories before losing a game in 1937. Carl Hubbell, and the team which would support him in his quest for a record, the New York Giants, were at their best in 1936 and 1937. They were the best in the National League at a time when their crosstown rivals, the Yankees, were dominant in the American League and also in the World Series. They beat the Giants both years despite Hubbell's presence. The Giants won only three World Series games in the two years and Hubbell won two of them. Carl Hubbell was the ace of the Giants staff and the National League's most valuable player in 1936. He led the league in 1936 with 26 victories, an .813 winning percentage, and a 2.31 ERA. In 1937 he again topped the league in wins with 22 and percentage with .733 and added the strikeout crown with 159, his career high. It was this kind of consistency that earned Carl Hubbell the nickname "the Meal Ticket." His manager, Bill Terry, knew Hubbell would pitch in rotation and stop any losing streak before it gained momentum. The Giants were off to a bad start in 1936, although Hubbell was winning two of every three decisions. The day Hubbell's winning streak began, July 17, the Giants were in fifth place, barely over .500 at 42-41 and 10 games behind the defending champion Chicago Cubs. Hubbell had lost his last start, a tough two-hit 1-0 game, to the Cubs' Big Bill Lee. Chicago's run was unearned. Appropriately Hubbell got the Giants back on a winning track by shutting out Pittsburgh, 6-0. The game contained a streak of another kind. In the first inning Joe Moore, Mel Ott, and Hank Leiber hit successive triples. Before the inning ended, Eddie Mayo, a utility infielder, added another triple. Not only was Hubbell off on a personal winning streak that wouldn't end until the next year, the Giants had found their own victory pace. Oddly, considering the magnitude of Hubbell's record, the streak-starting shutout was the last one he pitched in 1936. He had a season-opening shutout the next year. However, low-run games predominated, and he produced an ERA of 1.95 for the run of 24 games. Carl Hubbell's great rival was Dizzy Dean, and duels between the two were matchups between two titans. Hubbell's lefthanded screwball was matched against the fastball of the colorful screwball of the Cardinals. These confrontations were arranged as often as possible for their gate appeal, and Dean tried to head off Hubbell's march toward glory three times during the string. Twice he failed gloriously and once ingloriously. During the 1936 portion of the skein, Dean lost 2-1 in an extra-inning game and lost another 2-1 game in the regulation nine innings. These were typical Hubbell-Dean matchups, with both pitchers rising to the occasion. Hubbell, over the years, rose higher more often. Probably in frustration, when the streak reached 22 on May 19, 1937, Dean lost both the game and his temper when umpire George Barr called a balk against Dizzy for the third time. It gave a reprieve to the batter, Dick Bartell, who had flied out. He then hit a line drive which Pepper Martin dropped, and a flurry of runs followed. Dean's retaliation was to throw beanballs at every Giant batter who dared step to the plate. In this pre-helmet time such tactics were not viewed kindly, and outfielder Jimmy Ripple offered to take Dean on in a one-to-one fistfight. Dean, who spent a career vainly trying to find someone he could lick, accepted the challenge. He was engulfed by Giant bodies, topped by players in Cardinal uniforms, in what turned into one of the best displays of belligerence ever seen on a ballfield. Individual fights ranged all around the diamond. There were no peacemakers among the players. Among the few who chose to be spectators was Carl Hubbell. He had better use for his arm than swinging it at someone. When order was restored, Hubbell finished pitching a one-run, seven-hit game. Dean protested his subsequent fine and threatened to boycott the upcoming All Star Game. As usual his threat was unfulfilled. It would have been far better for him if he had stayed away. It was in the 1937 All Star Game that Dean was hit on the foot by an Earl Averill line drive. He tried to pitch while favoring a broken toe and ruined a great right arm. The end of Hubbell's streak came on May 31 at the hands of the team which considered any victory over the Giants as compensation for an otherwise dismal season. The Brooklyn Dodgers invaded the Polo Grounds for a doubleheader which drew the second-largest crowd that had ever crammed into the Giants home field. The Dodgers had always been a tough team for Hubbell. He had beaten them five times during his 24-game streak, twice in relief, but in the opening game of the doubleheader Brooklyn closed the door on Hubbell's feat. Carl Hubbell took the long walk from the mound to the clubhouse in center field during the third inning. Five runs had scored. There had been seven hits and three walks. In came Dick Coffman, who had been Lefty Grove's nemesis. It would have been fitting if he had stopped the Dodgers in their tracks and the Giants had rallied to save Hubbell's streak so he could extend it the next time. Neither happened; Brooklyn scored five more runs, the Giants only tallied three runs for the whole game. Pitchers with 12 or More Straight Victories in Season ===================================================== National League (36) ------------------------------------------------ Year Pitcher Won ------------------------------------------------ 1888 Timothy Keefe, N.Y. 19 1912 Richard Marquard, N.Y. 19 1884 Charles Radbourn, Provi. 18 1885 Michael Welch, N.Y. 17 1890 John Luby, Chi. 17 1959 El Roy Face, Pitts. 17 1886 James McCormick, Chi. 16 1936 Carl Hubbell, N.Y. 16 1947 Ewell Blackwell, Cinn. 16 1962 John Sanford, S.F. 16 1924 Arthur Vance, Brook. 15 1968 Robert Gibson, St. L. 15 1972 Steven Carlton, Phila. 15 1885 James McCormick, Chi. 14 1886 John Flynn, Chi. 14 1904 Joseph McGinnity, N.Y. 14 1909 Edward Reulbach, Chi. 14 1984 Richard Sutcliffe, Chi. 14 1985 Dwight Gooden, N.Y. 14 1880 Lawrence Corcoran, Chi. 13 1884 Charles Buffinton, Bos. 13 1892 Denton Young, Cleve. 13 1893 Frank Killen, Pitt 13 1896 Frank Dwyer, Cin. 13 1897 Fred Klobededanz, Bos 13 1898 Ted Lewis, Bos 13 1909 Chris. Mathewson, N.Y. 13 1910 Charles Phillippe, Pitts. 13 1927 Burleigh Grimes, N.Y. 13 1956 Brooks Lawrence, Cin. 13 1966 Philip Regan, L.A. 13 1971 Dock Ellis, Pitts. 13 1885 John Clarkson, Chi. 13 1886 Charles Ferguson, Phila. 12 1902 John Chesbro, Pitts. 12 1904 George Wiltse, N.Y. 12 1906 Edward Reulbach, Chi. 12 1975 Burt Hooton, L.A. 12 1992 Tom Glavine, Atl 12 ------------------------------------------------ American League (37) ------------------------------------------------ Year Pitcher Won ------------------------------------------------ 1912 Walter Johnson, Wash. 16 1912 Joseph Wood, Bos. 16 1931 Robert Grove, Phila. 16 1934 Lynwood Rowe, Det. 16 1932 Alvin Crowder, Wash. 15 1937 John Allen, Cleve. 15 1969 David McNally, Balt. 15 1974 Gaylord Perry, Cleve. 15 1904 John Chesbro, N.Y. 14 1913 Walter Johnson, Wash. 14 1914 Charles Bender, Phila. 14 1928 Robert Grove, Phila. 14 1961 Edward Ford, N.Y. 14 1980 Steven Stone, Balt. 14 1986 W. Roger Clemens, Bos. 14 1924 Walter Johnson, Wash. 13 1925 Stanley Coveleski, Wash. 13 1930 Wesley Ferrell, Cleve. 13 1940 Louis Newsom, Det. 13 1949 Ellis Kinder, Bos. 13 1971 David McNally, Balt. 13 1973 James Hunter, Oak. 13 1978 Ronald Guidry, N.Y. 13 1983 D. LaMarr Hoyt, Chi. 13 1990 Bobb Witt, Tex 13 1991 Scott Erickson, Minn 13 1901 Denton Young, Bos. 12 1910 Russell Ford, N.Y. 12 1914 Hubert Leonard, Bos. 12 1929 Jonathan Zachary, N.Y. 12 1931 George Earnshaw, Phila. 12 1938 John Allen, Cleve. 12 1939 Atley Donald, N.Y. 12 1946 David Ferriss, Bos. 12 1961 Luis Arroyo, N.Y. 12 1963 Edward Ford, N.Y. 12 1968 David McNally, Balt. 12 1971 Patrick Dobson, Balt. 12 1985 Ronald Guidry, N.Y. 12 ------------------------------------------------ Lost in the Crowd By winning 24 games in a row over two seasons, Carl Hubbell obscured the feat of Roy Face in 1958 and 1959 when the forkballer won 22 consecutive games, all in relief. That stands as the best achievement for a reliever. Also in 1959, Face equaled Johnny Allen's mark of 17 consecutive wins, doing it all in one season. Roy Face, only five-eight and weighing just 160 pounds, didn't lose his first decision in 1959 until September 11. He had entered the game in relief and gave up the winning run in the ninth inning of a game at Los Angeles when Charlie Neal hit a single. Until then, it appeared that Roy Face was destined to never lose a game. Even when his forkball wasn't working its usual magic, he won. A modest man, Face would point to six or seven games when the Pirates' hitters bailed him out. The most extreme of these times came in a June 11 game, when the San Francisco Giants played Pittsburgh. Face came in to protect a 7-5 lead in the eighth inning. The Giants had two men on base and Willie Mays came up as a pinch hitter. He homered and the Giants led, 8-7. In the bottom of the inning, the Pirates erupted with five runs and Face had a win instead of a loss. During his string, Face won eleven of his games in extra innings. Consecutive Base Hits The feat of making a dozen consecutive base hits has been accomplished only twice in all the years major league baseball has been played. The record has rested there for thirty-five years and might never see the time when a batter delivers a baker's dozen to provide a new record. The hitter who reaches 13 will cap a slow, gradual climb toward a peak shared by Pinky Higgins and Walt Dropo, both American Leaguers. The National League's record is 10. The history of consecutive base hits goes back to 1897, when Ed Delahanty, whom you would expect to set such standards, and Jake Gettman, whom you wouldn't, each got ten hits in a row during the season. Delahanty, one of five major-league-playing brothers, batted .377 for Philadelphia in 129 games. Gettman, who only played one season as a regular, got his ten straight while appearing in only 36 games for Washington. He hit .315 overall. The National League record is still 10 consecutive hits, and six others have joined the original pair. Tris Speaker was the first to top 10, getting 11 straight hits in 1920. Speaker had eclipsed Doc Johnson's American League total of 9, hit in 1919, the same season Brooklyn's Ed Konetchy had joined Delahanty and Gettman with 10. The next year, when Speaker moved the major league record up a notch, his feat came amid such epoch record-setting as Babe Ruth's 54 home runs. This had broken Ruth's own mark of 29 set the season before. It dwarfed Speaker's rattling off 11 straight hits. In fact, Speaker's own accomplishment, leading the Cleveland Indians to a World Series victory despite the loss of shortstop Ray Chapman to a fatal beaning during the pennant chase, overshadowed his own batting feats. This included a runner-up .388 to George Sisler's league-leading batting average of .407. However, Speaker's 11 straight stood the test of time. During the 1920s others made a run at the record but couldn't get beyond 10 straight hits. They included Sisler in 1921 and Harry Heilmann in 1922. Kiki Cuyler in 1925 and Chick Hafey in 1929, all future Hall of Famers, got up to 10 straight in the National League. In 1936 another Hall of Famer to be, Joe Medwick, hit in 10 straight times at bat. One outsider who edged onto the list with those headed for baseball's Hall of Fame was a reserve catcher, Harry McCurdy. A rookie with the White Sox in 1926, he only played in 33 games, but cracked out 10 straight hits while batting .326. He might have played in more games, but he had a month's vacation in August. He was claimed by the Yankees on waivers, but when New York discovered this included an obligation for the rookie's bonus of $30,000, they refused to complete the deal. The White Sox insisted they were honor-bound. As is usual in baseball, honor lost and McCurdy remained a substitute catcher with Chicago. Speaker's record finally tumbled in 1938, when Mike "Pinky" Higgins, the Boston Red Sox third baseman, began by going 4 for 4 against the White Sox in Chicago. The next day the team was in Detroit to play a doubleheader with the Tigers. When Higgins went 4 for 4, with a walk, against Roxie Lawson in the first game, and singled his first time up in the second game, Cal Hubbard, umpiring on the bases, observed, "That makes you 5 for 5 for the day." Higgins told Hubbard he was 9 for 9, counting the previous day in Chicago. It wasn't enough that Higgins put pressure on himself, but after he got his tenth straight hit, the field announcer at Briggs Field, Ty Tyson, made a public-address announcement that Higgins could tie Speaker's record if he got another hit the next time up. Higgins shook off the hex and got the hit and, with everyone knowing a new record was on the line, ripped a single off Tommy Bridges, the best curveballer in the league, the next time up. It was an unlucky 13, however, as Higgins fanned his last time at bat. The catcher in both games of the doubleheader was Rudy York. It was the year the Tigers tried to find a place for him to play. Even though he was to be described by Tom Meany as "part Indian, part first baseman," when Hank Greenberg moved to the outfield so York could play where he'd do the least damage, the one season as a catcher had been a disaster. Higgins later confided he had little trouble guessing a fastball was coming as York had become known to avoid complications by refusing to call for curveballs. In 1952 the slugging first baseman of the Red Sox, Walt Dropo, tied Higgins' record. He had debuted in 1950 with a sensational season, hitting .322, but he never hit above .300 again. Dropo had begun the season with Boston, but in a multiplayer deal in June, he had been traded to Detroit. Going along with Dropo was Johnny Pesky, longtime shortstop for the Red Sox and, in the way of coincidences in record setting, had reached 11 straight hits, one behind Higgins' record, in 1946. Pesky was at shortstop in the games when Dropo tied him first for runner-up, a spot he now shared with Speaker. He watched as Dropo got his twelfth straight. Like Higgins, Walt Dropo made his run in a doubleheader. He had gone 5 for 5 against the Yankees in a single game on July 14, and the next day, in Griffith Stadium, he had four straight in the first game. All the hits had been singles, but starting off in the first inning of the nightcap, the powerful Dropo hit a triple with the bases loaded. In the third inning he had his eleventh straight hit, another single, and Mickey Vernon, the Washington first baseman, told him he could tie the record with a hit the next time at bat. He did with a double. And he had another time at bat coming, in the seventh inning. Despite Dropo's hitting, the Tigers trailed, 7-6. He swung from the heels but only lifted a foul fly which catcher Mickey Grasso caught at the edge of the field boxes. The streak was over. Dropo added a single in the ninth inning but had to settle for a shared record which has stood against more recent assaults. Ken Singleton of Baltimore got 10 in 1981, and Kirby Puckett of Minnesota reached 10 in 1987. Bip Roberts of Cincinnati managed the feat in 1992. Most Consecutive Hits ------------------------------------------------ American League ------------------------------------------------ Player Team Year H ------------------------------------------------ Pinky Higgins Bos. 1938 12 Walt Dropo Det. 1952 12 Tris Speaker Cleve. 1920 11 Johnny Pesky Bos. 1946 11 George Sisler St.L. 1921 10 Harry Heilmann Det. 1922 10 Harry McCurdy Chi. 1926 10 Rip Radcliff Chi. 1938 10 Ken Singleton Balt. 1981 10 Kirby Puckett Minn. 1987 10 Doc Johnston Cleve. 1919 9 Ty Cobb Det. 1925 9 Sam Rice Wash. 1925 9 Hal Trosky Cleve. 1936 9 Ted Williams Bos. 1939 9 Tony Oliva Minn. 1967 9 Sammy Sosa Chi. 1993 9 Nap Lajoie Cleve. 1910 8 George Sisler St.L. 1922 8 St.L. 1927 8 Buddy Myer Wash. 1929 8 Oscar Melillo St.L. 1931 8 Sammy West St.L. 1933 8 Hank Bauer N.Y. 1952 8 Johnny Groth Det. 1950 8 Don Baylor Cal. 1978 8 Dan Ford Cal. 1979 8 Jorge Orta Cleve. 1980 8 ------------------------------------------------ National League ------------------------------------------------ Player Team Year H ------------------------------------------------ Ed Delahanty Phila. 1897 10 Jake Gettman Wash. 1897 10 Ed Konetchy Brook. 1919 10 Kiki Cuyler Pitts. 1925 10 Chick Hafey St.L. 1929 10 Joe Medwick St.L. 1936 10 Buddy Hassett Bos. 1940 10 Woody Williams Cin. 1943 10 Bip Roberts Cin. 1992 10 Joe Kelley Balt. 1894 9 Rogers Hornsby St.L. 1924 9 Taylor Douthit St.L. 1926 9 Babe Herman Brook. 1926 9 Bill Jurges N.Y. 1941 9 Terry Moore St.L. 1947 9 Dave Philley Phila. 1958 9 Phila. 1959 9 Felipe Alou S.F. 1962 9 Willie Stargell Pitts. 1966 9 Rennie Stennett Pitts. 1975 9 Ron Cey L.A. 1977 9 Roger Connor St.L. 1895 8 Sammy Strang Chi. 1900 8 Jack Fournier Brook. 1923 8 Jimmy Johnston Brook. 1923 8 Glenn Wright Pitts. 1924 8 Chick Hafey St.L. 1928 8 Lefty O'Doul N.Y. 1933 8 Kiki Cuyler Cin. 1936 8 Augie Galan Brook. 1944 8 Wayne Terwilliger Chi. 1949 8 Dick Sisler Phila. 1950 8 Eddie Waitkus Phila. 1950 8 Sid Gordon Bos. 1952 8 Lee Walls Chi. 1958 8 Curt Flood St.L. 1964 8 Jerry Grote N.Y. 1970 8 Billy Williams Chi. 1972 8 Dave Winfield S.D. 1979 8 ------------------------------------------------ Team Winning Streaks The two longest winning streaks by teams had different outcomes. Twice National League clubs won 21 in a row and the pennant. When the Chicago White Stockings did it, under Cap Anson, in 1880, they were simply running away from the pack. They won the pennant by 15 games. However, when their descendants, the Chicago Cubs, won 21 in a row in 1935, the drive capped a sensational stretch battle that caught and passed their rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, within a few days of the season's end. These two 21-game streaks are not the longest on record. The record of 26 games won in a row by the 1916 New York Giants stands as the most perverse record of achievement in baseball. No other team has won so many games so convincingly to such little purpose. The Giants came in fourth, despite having had another win streak the same season of 17 straight. Even more peculiarly, the 26 games in a row were all played at home. Maybe the Giants could only win at the Polo Grounds? No. The 17 straight were all won on the road. John McGraw did a remarkable thing in 1916. He rebuilt the team well into the season, after they had won 17 in a row. The season had started dismally, and before they hit their stride, they had lost thirteen of the first fifteen games played. When they ran off a streak of wins, it only made up for previously lost ground. Then they flattened out again. McGraw acted. He had a flawed infield. Shortstop Art Fletcher was a gem, but the other positions were played by former stars, Fred Merkle at first and Larry Doyle at second. Bill McKechnie, the third baseman, would someday be a Hall of Famer, but as a manager. John McGraw had a love-hate relationship with Buck Herzog. He loved him as a player, but hated him as an individual. Herzog had been a rookie with the Giants and was traded away to the Braves, then swapped back again to star on three successive pennant winners, in 1911 through 1913. Then he was exiled again. McGraw coveted Herzog, an unrepentant infielder who could hit and play any place with superb skill. They met privately, agreed that the money and opportunity involved was more important than any blood feud, and McGraw swapped the immortal Christy Mathewson, whose fadeaway pitch had failed, to Cincinnati, where he would become manager. He sent McKechnie along and a young outfielder of promise but little playing time, Edd Roush. The next year and two years later Roush won the batting championships. McGraw never regretted his move. He had laid the groundwork for the 1917 pennant. Even though the season was well along, McGraw shipped his former captain, Larry Doyle, to Chicago for Heinie Zimmerman. Doyle, who had shouted in boyish enthusiasm, "It's great to be young and a Giant," was no longer young and no longer a Giant. Fred Merkle, forgiven the blunder of 1908, when he failed to touch second as an apparent winning run scored and cost the Giants a pennant, had also grown old in McGraw's service and was shipped out so a rookie, Walter Holke, could finish the season at first base. When Zimmerman arrived, Herzog was shifted to second, and double plays began to be turned, base hits became infield outs, and the pitchers relished their new-found support. The Giants' drive began as late as September 7, when they were in fourth place, ten games out of third. Ferdie Schupp emerged as a star pitcher and won six games in the string. Pol Perritt won the first game of a doubleheader on September 9 and enjoyed it so much he came back and pitched a shutout in the second game. Regulars won, and rookies debuted and won. The Giants won, but they didn't move up. The Giants ripped off 12 in a row and then paused for a rain-stopped tie game, 1-1, as Burleigh Grimes, who lost 13 in a row that season, managed a tie game for Pittsburgh. The streak resumed the next day and went on and on, although the Giants had been eliminated from catching Brooklyn in first place. It was the Phillies who were breathing on the necks of the Dodgers, with a chance to tie on the last day. The Giants' streak was stopped in their last home game of the season, when they lost to the Boston Braves. They crossed the bridge to Brooklyn to close out the season on October 2, and McGraw set off wide speculation in the press by leaving the bench during the game and intimating afterward that the Giants had deliberately lost the game to ensure a Dodger pennant. Brooklyn was managed by Wilbert Robinson, once McGraw's closest crony, his coach and developer of pitchers. Some argument, some twist to the volatile McGraw temper had made them enemies. McGraw, who hated to lose, loathed losing to Brooklyn and Uncle Robbie. Maybe that's all there was to it, just another symptom of McGraw being a sore loser. Yet just ahead was the Black Sox scandal, and playing for the Giants were two non-Chicago players who were to be swept out of baseball when Judge Landis purged its suspect characters--Heinie Zimmerman and Bennie Kauff. McGraw's 1916 Giants finished in fourth place--right where they were when they began their 26-game streak!--and 7 games out of first place. The 1935 Chicago Cubs, whose 21 straight wins carried them to a pennant, were a streaky team that year and the next year, too. In 1935 they faced a task made tougher by the schedule. The St. Louis Cardinals, the Gas House Gang world champions from 1934, not only led by 2 games, but the indomitable Deans, Dizzy and Paul, headed the staff. Even more comforting for the Cards, the schedule called for the Cubs to play the last five games of the season at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. In 1935 the Cubs picked up momentum, and it took them past the Cards in the middle of the streak. They took the lead on September 14 as they won their eleventh game and were three games ahead of the crumbling Cards when they reached St. Louis for the final five games. Lon Warneke beat Paul Dean 1-0 in the opener, and Bill Lee won his twentieth game of the season, beating Dizzy Dean 6-3 to clinch the pennant. It was the first game of a doubleheader, and the Cubs reached 21 straight by taking the nightcap. They lost the next game, a meaningless one in the pennant race, in extra innings on Joe Medwick's second home run of the game. The Cards won the season's finale, 2-1, but it was the Cubs who went on to the World Series. The next year was also a season of streaks. Again the Cubs got in gear with an impressive run of victories, taking 15 straight before midseason was reached. It did not lead to a pennant. Another 15-game winning streak, by the New York Giants, brought the championship to the Polo Grounds. It was a streak that started late in the season and ran, in part, concurrently with Carl Hubbell's own string of 16 wins. While the Giants were racking up 15 straight, Hubbell appeared in ten consecutive games. He never ran out of steam, only games to win. The season ended with Hubbell experiencing a 16-game streak. He extended it by winning his first 8 decisions the next year to reach 24 straight wins over two seasons. Other very long winning streaks in the National League that added late-season zest to pennant races were those of the 1924 Dodgers and, of course, the 1951 Giants. It was Dazzy Vance against the world in 1924 when he dominated the league and was the MVP. The Dodgers came up short, unable to catch the leading Giants, who added a fourth straight pennant in 1924, when Brooklyn's 15 straight were not enough. In 1951 the same traditional rivals reversed roles, but not results. It was the Dodgers who were far in front when the Giants, managed by former Dodger skipper Leo Durocher, began a late-season drive. The Giants had started with the wrong kind of a streak. They lost their first 11 games and spent the season trying to catch the fast-flying Dodgers. They were 13 games behind when they won the first of 16 straight decisions on August 12 and began to close the gap the Dodgers had opened. The Giants slowly edged closer and into a tie with a game to play. When both teams won their final games, the Dodgers on Jackie Robinson's extra-inning heroics in Philadelphia, the stage was set for a playoff series. It was won by Bobby Thomson's dramatic home run in the last of the ninth of the third, and decisive, game. The American League's consecutive winning streaks have been turned in mostly by powerhouse teams headed for easy pennant triumphs. However, the 1906 American League season produced long strings of wins by two teams locked in a hotly contested pennant race. The Chicago White Sox set a record, since tied by the 1947 Yankees and the 1988 Boston Red Sox, of 19 straight wins. Dubbed "the Hitless Wonders" because of a .230 team batting average, the White Sox engaged in a dramatic scenario with the New York team, then called the Highlanders. In early August the White Sox were in fourth place. Ahead of them were Philadelphia, New York, and Cleveland. Day after day the White Sox chipped away at the lead held by the teams ahead of them. They eventually passed Philadelphia and Cleveland. The Highlanders proved the hardest to catch. They had benefited from a winning streak of their own, 15 in a row. However, in the final surge of the pennant race, it was the White Sox who came home in first place. New York became the only team to win 15 in a row and not win a pennant in the American League. In the National League since 1900, three teams have won at least 15 in a row and not won the pennant. The most glaring example, of course, was the 1916 Giants, winners of 26 and 17 straight. The 1936 Cubs won 15 in a row and finished second to the Giants, also winners of 15 straight. The 1907 Giants had the poorest finish. Despite 17 straight wins, they finished fourth, 25 games out of first place. In the main, however, if a team wants to ensure winning a pennant, a good way to do it is rack up 15 or more consecutive victories along the way, preferably in the stretch run.