Baseball history unpacked, August 19

... on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue brings a you a wildly popular Cubs-centric look at baseball’s past. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow along as we review select scenes from the rich tapestry of Chicago Cubs and Major League Baseball history. The embedded links often point to articles that pertain to the scenes, such as reproductions of period newspapers, images, and/or other such material as is often found in the wild.

Today in baseball history:

• 1913 - Grover Alexander is reached for nine straight hits and six runs as the Cubs defeat Phillies, 10 - 4. (3)

Box score.

• 1949 - The Phillies host ‘Eddie Waitkus Night’ at Shibe Park and shower their injured first baseman with gifts. The All-Star infielder, in uniform for the first time since June, had been shot in the chest at Chicago’s Edgewater Beach Hotel by Ruth Ann Steinhagen, an obsessed fan upset with his trade from the Cubs to Philadelphia. (1)
• 1950 - The Pirates outslug the Cubs, 13 - 9, for their sixth win in seven games. Ralph Kiner slugs two homers to put him seven days and nine games ahead of last year’s pace, when he hit 54. He has rapped eight dingers this month and four in the last five games. Clyde McCullough adds a bases-loaded triple, sac fly, and two-run double, while Johnny Hopp homers. The Cubs answer with homers by Hank Sauer, Mickey Owen, and Roy Smalley, but it’s not enough. Reliever Bob Rush loses to Murry Dickson. (3)

Box score.

• 1951 - Forty-three-inch tall Eddie Gaedel walks on four pitches in his only major league appearance. Bill Veeck’s idea of playing the midget was legal at the time but is later outlawed. (1)
• 1965 - At Wrigley Field, Reds’ hurler Jim Maloney no-hits the Cubs 1-0, with the only run scoring on a Leo Cardenas homer in the tenth inning. Earlier in the season, the Fresno native had also no-hit the Mets for ten innings, but lost the game in the eleventh when Johnny Lewis homered. (1)

Box score.

• 1969 - At Wrigley Field, Ken Holtzman no-hits the Braves, 3-0, with Ron Santo’s first inning homer off Phil Niekro providing all of the Cubs’ runs. The no-hitter is the fifth of the season, and the first since 1923 in which no strikeouts are recorded, when Sad Sam Jones accomplished the feat with the Yankees. (1,3)

Box score. Al will have a longer article — with video! — on this no-hitter at 1 p.m. CT this afternoon.

• 1970 - Fergie Jenkins homers and his teammates add another six as Chicago coasts over San Diego, 12-2. Jim Hickman (2), Glenn Beckert, Johnny Callison, Joe Pepitone, and Billy Williams also hit round trippers for Chicago. Six of the Cub homers are solo shots and San Diego adds a solo homer: the seven solo homers by two teams sets a National League record and ties the major league mark set on April 29, 1962.

Box score.

• 1989 - Cubs’ center fielder Jerome Walton extends his hitting streak to 29 games in an 8-4 loss to Houston at the Astrodome. With his seventh-inning single, the 24-year-old rookie establishes the longest consecutive-game hit streak in modern franchise history, surpassing the mark set by Ron Santo in 1966. (1)

Box score.

• 2011 - Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts fires general manager Jim Hendry, the man who brought the perennial losers within five outs of the World Series in 2003 and built back-to-back division winners in 2007 and 2008, after nine years on the job. Hendry’s success was achieved at the cost of a massive payroll, however, and the team is now on the hook for a number of expensive contracts to underachieving former stars, while headed for a second consecutive 5th-place finish. His players send Hendry out a winner as pinch-hitter Tyler Colvin hits a walk-off single in the 10th inning to give the Cubs a 5-4 win over the Cardinals on his last day. Assistant GM Randy Bush is named to take over in the interim but is not in line to succeed Hendry. (3)
• Cubs birthdays: Ike McAuley, Tex Carleton, Tim Blackwell, Gary Gaetti, Matt Franco, Rocky Cherry.

Sources:

• (1) — The National Pastime.
• (2) — Today in Baseball History.
• (3) — Baseball Reference.
• (4) — Society for American Baseball Research.
• (5) — Baseball Hall of Fame.

Thanks for reading.