April 24, 1915
Phillies vs. Boston Braves
Athletics @ Boston Red Sox
Only seven teams had ever started a season 8-0 and no team
had accomplished this feat in the 20th century except, now, for the
Philadelphia Phillies. Confidence was
just exploding out the ballpark on Huntingdon and Broad as the fans were
treated to something that even Connie Mack’s great Athletics had never
accomplished. Coincidentally, the last
team to win 9 games to start the season was the 1888 Boston Beaneaters, the
predecessors of the Braves club the Phils would be playing today. As the gates opened at 3pm, a standing-room
only crowd poured into the rickety old woodworks of the Baker Bowl. If the team was confident, the fans must have
been downright cocky about the Phillies’ chance for a win. With the way the club had hit for the first
week of the season, and the way Erskine Mayer had thrown during his two starts,
it would take a gigantic effort on the part of the Braves just to keep
close. And they were starting Tom
Hughes? The same Tom Hughes the Phillies
knocked around for seven runs the week prior?
This was going to be a piece of cake.
Oh but the baseball gods have a way about these things, and as the popular phrase goes, “You can’t predict baseball.” Erskine didn’t even last past the third inning. When he was pulled the score was 4-0 Braves. Joe Oeschger relieved Mayer, the first time all year a relief pitcher came in for the Phillies, and proceeded to give up six more runs. The bats that had scored early and often all year suddenly went silent. Beals Becker and Fred Luderus hit home runs in the 6th and 7th innings, but at that point the Braves already had 8 runs. Unfortunately the Phillies were never in this one. Even worse, they were embarrassed 10-2 by a Braves club they had beat four times in a row. And sadly, just like that, the winning streak was over.
The next time the Phillies would start a season off with
three straight wins is 1926. No Phillies
team has won more than three games to start a season since this 1915 club. How crazy is that? In one hundred seasons, no Phillies team has
strung together four wins to open a campaign.
Not the Whiz Kids, not the Carlton/Schmidt almost dynasty, not the most
recent late-2000s club with Utley, Howard, and Hamels. The 1915 club deserves credit for this
accomplishment.
Since 1871, only 22 teams have started a season 8-0. Only twenty-two! The National League was only 29-years old in
1915, and only three clubs had ever accomplished 8 wins to start the season. Sure those three teams combined to go 143-164
after their opening winning streaks, but hopefully the Phillies would
different. Philadelphia fans, then as
much as now, celebrate early success trepidatiously, wondering if the winning
and great play was too good to be true.
I’m sure the fates of the other three teams made some Phillies fans
worry one hundred years ago, but for the most part the city was confident in
this team. They had Pat Moran managing
the club, after all! So far he had done
a superb job getting the full amount of talent and grit from his stars. Alexander had been great, Carvath was banging
home runs, Luderus was on fire. Hell,
even the Possum Whitted, the man the club got in return for the beloved Sherry
Magee who was supposed to be a bench guy, was proving his worth. One little setback wasn’t going to signal the
destruction of this team. Still, 9-0
would have been pretty great…
The Athletics were back in action after a day off in
Boston. The Red Sox had proved to be
difficult for the A’s to handle in the beginning of the season, which wasn’t
much of a surprise since they were one of the favorites to take the AL
pennant. And I guess a moral victory of
sorts could be claim by the A’s since they show tenacity in most of their games
against the Sox, but moral victories don’t get added to the standings and
sooner or later the Mackmen would have to start earning some actual wins.
Herb Pennock made his third start of the season. You’ll remember in his first game he almost
no-hit the Red Sox. In his second game
he got hit like Eric Lindros skating through the neutral zone with head down,
giving up 8 runs in 6 innings to the Yankees.
Today, he was somewhere in between, though I’m sure he was happy that
the offense showed up and banged out five doubles in support of him. Pennock only allowed four hits all day, which
is great! But he also walked nine, which
is terrible. Oh and the A’s committed
three errors in the field. Amazingly
enough only three of those sixteen base runners crossed home plate. Hey, even when you play awful there’s a
chance the other team will just be flat out worse.
The win put the A’s 1.5 games up on the last place St. Louis
Browns. But is there any way that Mack
felt confident knowing that Herb Pennock was his ace? Herb had given up 16 hits, 11 runs, and 13
walks in his past two outings. The 13
strikeouts he recorded in two games was a good sign, but that didn’t overshadow
the other deficiencies he displayed.
Unfortunately for Pennock, he would only have 14 for the rest of the
year! Of course, nobody knew that
yet. As of right now in this season, the
best thing that could come from this win over the Red Sox was that the dim glow
of hope stayed alive. The hopeful person
might say that it was still early and there was time to chance course. The logical person would say the A’s have
played like failures in every aspect of the game. They could not pitch worth a damn and had no
hope of finding a worthy one. The
offense had only produced 36 runs, putting them second to last in the AL and in
the bottom quarter of all professional teams.
This win was nice for Connie and the club, but it would take a few more
if they hoped to be mentioned in the same sentence with the Phillies.
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