Baseball history unpacked, September 13

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue is pleased to present a light-hearted, Cubs-centric look at baseball’s colorful past, with plenty of the lore and various narratives to follow as they unfold over the course of time. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow along.

Today in baseball history:

• 1845 - Alexander Cartwright presents the first set of baseball rules, 20 in total. (2)
• 1883 - Cleveland’s one-arm pitcher Hugh Daily no-hits Philadelphia, 1-0. (2)
• 1900 - At the Polo Grounds, Christy Mathewson makes his first start, pitching a complete game loss to the Orphans. Chicago wins, 6-5, scoring four runs in the 1st, thanks to an error by 1B Jack Doyle. (2)
• 1902 - Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance play their first game as a SS-2B-1B combo for Chicago. Germany Schaefer is at 3B as Chicago clips St. Louis, 12-0. (2)
• 1906 - At St. Louis, Chicago tops the Cardinals, 6-2, as Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown wins his 11th straight. (2)
• 1909 - Ty Cobb clinches the American League home run title with his ninth round-tripper. It is an inside-the-park drive against the Browns. In fact, all his nine home runs this season are inside-the-park, including two on July 15th. Only Sam Crawford (12 in 1901) has hit more inside-the-park homers in a year than Cobb. (1,2)
• 1925 - Brooklyn’s Dazzy Vance narrowly misses back-to-back no-hitters over Philadelphia, pitching a 10-1 no-hitter five days after a 1-0 one-hitter. The Phils’ lone run is scored by Chicken Hawks, who reaches second base on an error. Five days earlier it was Hawks’ 2nd-inning single that ruined Vance’s no-hitter. On June 17, 1923, Vance lost a no-hitter with two out in the 9th. In the second game, the Phils win, 7-3, behind Hawks’ grand slam. (1,2)
• 1931 - At Wrigley Field, the Cubs win 11-7 over the Braves when player-manager Rogers Hornsby cracks an 11th-inning pinch grand slam. This is the first extra-inning pinch grand slam in major league history. The Cubs take the second game, 8-1, behind Guy Bush’s one-hitter, his second of the year. His first was against the Cards on August 9th. (2)
• 1932 - The New York Yankees clinched the American League pennant as Joe McCarthy became the first manager to win flags in both leagues. (1)
• 1938 - A special committee names Alexander Cartwright to Baseball’s Hall of Fame for originating the sport’s basic concepts. Henry Chadwick, inventor of the box score and the first baseball writer, is also honored. (1,2)
• 1942 - Chicago Cub SS Lennie Merullo makes a major league record four errors in the second inning of the nightcap against the Boston Braves. Merullo’s son is born today and is nicknamed Boots. The Cubs win, 12-8, after losing the first game 10-6.
• 1970 - At Wrigley Field, the Pirates lead the Cubs, 2-1, with two outs and no one on in the 9th when Willie Smith hits a routine fly to Matty Alou. Alou drops it and three singles later the Cubs have a 3-2 win. The victory puts the Cubs a game behind the Bucs and a half-game behind the Mets. (2)
• 1972 - Roberto Clemente’s final career regular-season home run – No. 240 – propels Pittsburgh to a 6-4 win over Chicago. It comes, appropriately enough, off Fergie Jenkins, Clemente’s old friend and frequent HR victim and within the “friendly confines” of Wrigley Field. Today’s blast is a two-run, tie-breaking bomb, “crashed deep into the center field seats,” as per Post-Gazette scribe Charley Feeney. “Clemente just hit everything I had,” admits Jenkins. “He hit a slider for a single, a fastball for a triple and another slider for the home run. He’s something.” (2)
• 1989 - Fay Vincent is elected baseball’s eighth commissioner, succeeding the late Bart Giamatti, whom he served as deputy commissioner. (1)
• 1991 - A 55-ton concrete beam crashes onto an empty public walkway at Olympic Stadium in Montreal. The Expos will reschedule, playing their final 13 home games on the road while the stadium is repaired and growing cracks in concrete ribs supporting the stadium are checked out. (1,2)
• 1998 - Sammy Sosa becomes the second player of the week to break the home run record of Roger Maris. Sosa, who had watched Mark McGwire tie and set the mark against the Cubs on September 8, launches two home runs against the Brewers at Wrigley Field. The second one breaks the record, sets off a mad dash of fans chasing the ball on the street outside the ballpark, and sets up a game-tying rally against the Brewers in the ninth inning. Mark Grace later wins the game for the Cubs 11-10 with a home run. Sosa also ties the National League record of ten multi-homer games in a single season set by Ralph Kiner in 1947. (1,2)
• 2001 - Due the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Major League Baseball postpones all games through September 17th. The 91 missed games, the most regular-season contests not played since World War I forced the cancellation of the final month of the 1918 season, are re-scheduled for the week after the regular season was supposed to end, meaning the World Series is likely to extend into November for the first time in history. (2)
• 2020 - 2020 - Alec Mills of the Cubs pitches a no-hitter, defeating the Brewers, 12-0, in only the 15th start of his career. (2)

Cubs birthdays: John Kelleher, Dutch Ruether, Rabbit Warstler, Greg Hibbard, Wade Miller, Alfonso Rivas.

Today in history:

• 509 BC - The temple of Jupiter on Rome’s Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September.
• 122 - Building begins on Hadrian’s Wall, Northern England.
• 533 - General Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimium, near Carthage, North Africa.
• 1845 - English chemist Michael Faraday discovers the ‘Faraday effect’, the influence of a magnetic field on polarized light.
• 1881 - America Lewis Howard Latimer invents and patents electric lamp with a carbon filament.

Common sources:

• (1) — Today in Baseball History.
• (2) — Baseball Reference.
• (3) — Society for American Baseball Research.
• (4) — Baseball Hall of Fame.
• (5) — This Day in Chicago Cubs history.
• For world history.

*pictured.

Some of these items spread from site to site without being verified. That is exactly why we ask for reputable sources if you have differences with a posted factoid, so that we can address that to the originators and provide clarity if not ‘truth’. Nothing is posted here without at least one instance of corroboration (this also includes the history bullets). Thanks for reading, and thanks also for your cooperation.