Fourteen Hits and Nowhere to Put Them
A shutout drowning in hits, a wild man gone unhittable by the nightcap, a milestone won from the bench, one swing answered twenty years younger.
Ed. 09.14.26
Fourteen Hits and Nowhere to Put Them (1913)
The Giants hit Larry Cheney all afternoon at Chicago's West Side Grounds: ten singles, four doubles, fourteen hits, no runs. Three of them were caught stealing. George Burns was thrown out stretching a single. Eleven more were still standing on the bases when it ended. Cheney went the distance and got the shutout. Baseball Reference still lists fourteen as the most hits a team has ever collected in a nine-inning game without scoring, tied by Washington's Milt Gaston in 1928.
Bobo Newsom, Twice in One Afternoon (1934)
Newsom opened a doubleheader for the Browns and walked the first four men he faced. Rogers Hornsby pulled him, and that should have been his day. Then George Blaeholder, slated to start the nightcap, came down sick. Bobo warmed up all over again. This time he struck out the first four, held the Athletics to two runs, and finished what he started. Same arm, same afternoon, two different pitchers.
The Last Thirty-Game Winner Was Sitting Down (1968)
McLain trailed 4-3 in the ninth and had already been lifted for a pinch hitter. Al Kaline walked for him. Mickey Stanley singled. Jim Northrup tapped one to first, the throw sailed past the catcher, and Kaline crawled back on his hands and knees to touch the plate. Then Willie Horton lined a 2-2 pitch over a drawn-in left fielder and it was over, 5-4. Reggie Jackson had homered twice and hated every minute of it. Nobody has won thirty since.
Forty and Twenty (1990)
Seattle signed the elder Griffey two weeks earlier, at forty, so a father and son could finally play beside each other. First inning at Anaheim, Kirk McCaskill on the mound: Senior turned on an 0-2 pitch and put it over the center field fence. Junior, all of twenty, hit the next one to left-center. The Mariners lost the game. Nobody has ever cared.
