1911 in Baseball - Events

Events

• May 13
  • Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers hits the first grand slam of his career. After six innings, Detroit leads the Boston Red Sox, 10–1. Boston comes back to win the game 13–11 in 10 innings.
  • The New York Giants score a Major League record 10 runs before the St. Louis Cardinals retire the first batter in the first inning. Fred Merkle drives in six of the Giants' 13 runs in the first en route to a 19–5 victory. When Giants manager John McGraw decides to save starting pitcher Christy Mathewson for another day, Rube Marquard enters the game in the second inning and sets a record for relievers (since broken) with 14 strikeouts in his eight-inning relief appearance.

• May 14 - In their first Sunday home game, the Cleveland Naps defeat the New York Highlanders, 16-3, before a crowd of nearly 16,000 spectactors. Cleveland's George Stovall leads the offense with 4 hits.

• June 18 - The Detroit Tigers staged the biggest comeback in Major League history after overcoming a 13-1 deficit (after 5½ innings) to defeat the Chicago White Sox by a score of 16–15.

• July 19 - Former circus acrobat Walter Carlisle completed an unassisted triple play for the Vernon Tigers of the Pacific Coast League. With the score tied at 3–3 in the sixth inning, and men on first and second base, Carlisle made a spectacular diving catch of a short fly by batter Roy Akin; stepped on second to retire Charlie Moore, and tagged George Metzger coming from first. The Tigers won the game, 5–4. With his heroic feat, the speedy English-born Carlisle entered the records books as the only outfielder ever to make an unassisted triple play in organized baseball.

• June 28 - The new Polo Grounds, a horseshoe-shaped structure, opens.

• July 24 - An American League all-star team - including Walter Johnson, Hal Chase, and Smokey Joe Wood - plays the Cleveland Naps to raise money for the widow of Addie Joss. The All-Stars win, 5-3.

• July 29 - In the first game of a doubleheader, Smoky Joe Wood pitches a no-hitter against the St. Louis Browns in a 5-0 Boston Red Sox victory.

• August 27 - Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox pitches a 5–0 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox.

• September 12 - In the nitecap of a game billed as a pitchers' duel, Boston Rustlers' Cy Young and the New York Giants' Christy Mathewson face each other before 10,000 fans, Boston's largest crowd of the year. Young gives up three home runs and nine runs in less than three innings. After the Giants build a 9–0 lead, Giants' manager John McGraw lifts Mathewson, who pitched just two innings, preferring to save his ace for the pennant race against the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies. This is the only time the two future Hall of Fame pitchers ever face each other.

• September 22 - Cy Young of the Boston Rustlers pitches a shutout for the 511th and final victory of his career, in a 1–0 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

• October 22 - The World Series between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics was resumed after six days of rain, and Chief Bender beat Christy Mathewson, 4–2, to give the Athletics a 3-1 lead.

• October 26 - The Philadelphia Athletics defeat the New York Giants, 13–2, in Game 6 of the World Series to win their second consecutive World Championship title. Philadelphia wins the series, four games to two. The six consecutive days of rain between Games 3 and 4 caused the longest delay between World Series games until the Loma Prieta earthquake interrupted the 1989 Series, which incidentally featured the same two franchises, albeit on the west coast.

• December 1 - Future Hall of Fame member Walter Alston is born in Venice, Ohio. Although Alston will come to bat only once during a brief major league career, he will have far greater longevity as the manager of the Dodgers from 1954 to 1976.