A’s Get Bested by the Best – Cy Young’s Perfect Game

By Bob Warrington

Late in life, Hall of Fame pitcher Denton “Cy” Young was reminiscing about his career and stated, “Of all the games I pitched in the big leagues, that one in Boston stands clearest in my mind.” For a man who won 511 games and lost 316 over 22 years, “that one in Boston” must have been some game. It was. Young pitched a perfect game against the Philadelphia Athletics on May 5, 1904. It occurred at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, and Young’s opponent on the mound that day was none other than another future Hall of Fame pitcher, Rube Waddell.

Young and Waddell started 14 games against each other during their careers, treating fans to some classic pitching duels. Sometimes, Waddell beat Young. On other occasions, Young defeated Waddell. The rivalry between these two outstanding pitchers was intense, and it serves as the starting point leading up to Cy Young’s moment of perfection when he became the master of the mound.

On April 25, 1904, Waddell had the upper hand when the Athletics defeated Cy Young and the Boston Americans in Philadelphia 2-0. (The Boston club was known as the Americans in 1904, one of several nicknames the team tried out during its early years. Others included Puritans, Pilgrims, and Somersets. In 1907, the Boston club adopted the Red Sox moniker by which it is known to this day.)

Waddell gained ascendancy over the Americans again on May 2, 1904, tossing a dandy one-hitter and shutting out the hometown Boston crew for the second time in a row 3-0. Although Jesse Tannehill was his mound opponent that day, Waddell taunted Young at the end of the game, claiming that he (Young) would suffer the same fate the next time the two pitchers met.

Waddell’s opportunity to make good on the boast came just three days later when he matched up again against Young. But, Waddell’s braggadocio couldn’t have been more poorly timed. He and the rest of the Athletics quickly discovered that the Boston hurler was at the top of his game. The two pitchers dueled on May 5, 1904, and as the “Philadelphia Inquirer” reported, “Cy Young equaled the world’s record this afternoon when he shut out the Athletics at the American League grounds without allowing one of the visitors to reach first base.”

The Athletics’ line-up that Young set down in order that fateful day was:

Topsy Hartsel - lf
*Danny Hoffman – ph-lf
Ollie Pickering – cf
Harry Davis – 1b
Lave Cross – 3b
Socks Seybold – rf
Danny Murphy – 2b
Monte Cross – ss
Ossee Schreckengost – c
Rube Waddell – p

(*Hoffman pinch hit for Hartsel in the fourth inning and remained in the game playing left field.)

According to accounts of the game, not a single ball was hit hard by A’s players all day. The “Inquirer” reported, “There was not a ghost of a show during the entire innings for an Athletic to reach first, for all the put-outs were clean-cut plays.”

On only two plays was there a chance that an A’s player would reach first base safely. Monte Cross hit a soft fly in the third inning into shallow right field, but it was caught, according to one newspaper report, “only after a hard run by outfielder Buck Freeman almost to the infield.” In the seventh inning, the A’s Ollie Pickering hit a slow grounder to shortstop Freddy Parent, but Pickering “was out only by about one foot” when Parent fired the ball to first baseman Candy LaChance.

Boston, on the other hand, hit Waddell quite freely, tallying 10 hits and three runs by the end of the contest. A costly error by Harry Davis in the seventh inning allowed one of the runs to score. Boston’s Lou Criger hit a double and advanced to third on Cy Young’s grounder to shortstop Monte Cross.

When Cross threw to first to get out Young, Davis muffed the throw, allowing Criger to score from third. Davis was charged with an error on the play.

Boston fans became increasingly aware that they were witnessing a historic game as the innings went by and Athletics’ players went down in order. The “Inquirer” reported, “When the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings passed without a visitor seeing first, the crowd was worked up to a fever pitch.”

When the A’s were at bat in the ninth inning, however, silence reigned supreme at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. What happened was recorded in colorful prose by a reporter who covered the event:

“There was the silence of the grave over the field when Monte Cross approached the plate, and not a sound was heard for any except the coaches until Monte was fanned after sending up several fouls. When the third strike was called on Monte, an awful din was cast over the field from 10,000 throats, and again when Schreckengost stepped to the plate all was quiet. Schreck almost gave the anxious fans heart disease when he hit a grounder toward Parent. There was no one who had the courage to stir until Parent had sent the ball straight to LaChance’s glove and then a roar even louder than before came from the throats of the onlookers.”

“Silence was again supreme when Waddell let a wide one go by, and even when he offered at the second ball there was no sound, as each was afraid any noise might disturb Young. There was heart-rending silence when Waddell took aim at the third ball pitched and sent it up in the air towards center field. Stahl ran back a short distance, and when he clung onto the ball, ending the game, a mighty shout went up from the crowd, who rushed on the field to have a look at the greatest of pitchers.”

Oddly, A’s manager Connie Mack did not use a pinch hitter for Waddell in the ninth inning as the 27th batsman. Waddell was not much of a threat at the plate, compiling a lifetime batting average of only .161. (He hit a measly .122 in 1904.) Perhaps Mack thought it only fitting that Waddell—Young’s great rival—should have the last chance to somehow get on base, thereby ruining the perfect game. No doubt Waddell would have desperately wanted the opportunity to do just that instead of being replaced at the plate by someone who had a greater likelihood of getting on base. For whatever reason, Mack allowed Waddell to bat, and it must have been for Young an exquisite ending to the perfect game to get out the man who just several days earlier had taunted him about the fate he (Young) would suffer the next time the two dueled on the baseball diamond.

Fans rushed onto the field to congratulate Young on his magnificent accomplishment. A newspaper reported, “One old gray-haired man jumped over the fence from third base and made a bee line for Young, who walked into the bench with Collins, and touching Young on the arm, put a bill in Cy’s hand.”

The pandemonium did not prevent Young from savoring his triumph over Waddell. When the latter flied out to end the game, Young yelled out to him, “How do you like that you hayseed!”

Boston players surrounded Young at game’s end, offering him hearty congratulations and slapping the great pitcher on his back. Decades later, Young would remember ruefully that no official from the Boston Americans’ front office came down to the locker room after the game to offer words of praise.

Connie Mack realized he had witnessed an outstanding pitching performance. Years later, baseball author Tom Meany wrote, “Connie Mack, who has seen more ballgames than any American living or dead, always considered Young’s perfect game against Rube Waddell in 1904 the greatest exhibition of pitching ever performed.”

The National Baseball Hall of Fame also believed it was worthy of mention when designing Young’s plaque for enshrinement. It reads, in part, “Pitched Perfect Game May 5, 1904, No Opposing Batsman Reaching First Base.”

As mentioned, Waddell had picked a particularly inauspicious time to issue his challenge to Young, who was in the midst of one of the most amazing pitching performance in major league history.

Although Young lost his April 25 game to Waddell, he retired the last six A’s batters in a row. On April 30, Young came on in the third inning, relieving George Winter in a game against Washington. Not a single Senator batter notched a hit against Young. On May 5, as noted, Young pitched a perfect game against the Athletics—27 batters up and 27 batters down. On May 6, Young threw no-hit ball for six and one-third innings against the Detroit Tigers. Sam Crawford then came up to the plate and smacked a single to end Young’s streak.

But what a streak it was! Young had pitched 24 1/3 hitless innings. He retired 73 batters without yielding a hit to any of them. That major league record stands to this day—attesting to its difficulty and significance.

Young’s perfect game was the first one pitched in the American League and one of three no-hitters that he threw during his career. Young’s first was in 1897, but a walk and four errors by his Cleveland Spiders’ team prevented the game from being perfect. Young garnered his third no-hitter in 1908, but a leadoff walk to the opposing team ended any chance that the game would be anything more than a no-hitter.

There were 10,267 lucky fans in the stands at Huntington Avenue Grounds on May 5, 1904 to watch history being made. Umpire Frank Dwyer called the game. It took only one hour and twenty-five minutes to complete, a tribute to the lack of A’s offensive production and the absence of television commercials to slow down the pace of the game.

There should be no sorrow for Rube Waddell for being at the receiving end of Young’s masterpiece. A little over one year later, on July 4, 1905, Waddell got a measure of revenge when he beat Young and the Americans 4-2 in a 20-inning marathon. The Boston hurler pitched 13 consecutive scoreless innings before he gave up a pair of unearned runs in the final inning to lose the game. Young did not walk a batter and was later quoted as saying, “For my part, I think it was the greatest game of ball I ever took part in.”

(The epic Independence Day struggle between Waddell and Young was ably chronicled by Daniel O’Brien in a story that appeared in Vol. IX, No. 3, Issue #57 – 2005 of the A’s Society newsletter.)

On the field, baseball consists mostly of routine plays and ordinary outcomes. But, there are those magical moments that make one game stand out above all the rest. That happened in Boston on May 5, 1904 when Cy Young ascended to the rarified air of perfection in setting down in order a pretty good Philadelphia Athletics team. (The A’s finished in fifth place in the American League that year with an 81-70 record.) It was an achievement in a career filled with them that would land Cy Young in the Hall of Fame, and it instantly became an entry in the lore of baseball greatness.