Edward Achorn

(A daily diary of the greatest season a major-league pitcher ever had.)

BOSTON — New England baseball fanatics by the thousands descend on the South End Grounds this afternoon. The little park — its hallowed soil occupied today by the Ruggles Street Station, a subway stop on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s Orange Line, near Northeastern University — has flown more pennants than any yard in the country, having served as the home of the game’s greatest team in 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1877, 1878 and 1883. The 1884 Beaneaters have continued the winning tradition, making their grounds one of Boston’s most popular summer destinations once again.

Still, the shrine has its share of detractors, people who happened to notice that the sagging wooden park has become little better than a dump. In 1883, the Boston Globe complains about the grounds’ “sadly dilapidated” seats and fences, griping that reporters have a poor view, and that the wooden outfield fence, decayed and riddled with holes, is “a disgrace to the city and the club.” That is not purely a local opinion. The New York Clipper reports that the South End Grounds are widely considered “the poorest and most shabbily fitted-up in the country.”

Boston’s adolescent boys contribute to the damage, poking holes through the rotting fences in their zeal to see games for free. Eventually, the club’s frugal president, Arthur H. Soden, hits on the idea of installing a second barrier, so that when the boys drill or cut peep holes, all they can see is the back of another fence, beyond the reach of their busy pocket knives.

Soden is forced to fight back against more serious freeloaders, as well: Enterprising landlords in the neighborhood have taken to installing stands on their roofs, and charging a bargain fee of 10 cents, one-fifth the National League admission. This is no minor threat. In May 1882, some three hundred people watch a game from outside, compared with only eight hundred inside. Soden strikes back that summer by installing a tall picket fence on top of the right field fence, and he follows through with more “screen work” in 1883.

Not to be denied, a number of men and boys begin shinnying up the telegraph poles surrounding the ballpark in 1884. They receive their comeuppance on July 19. While they are on top, enjoying the game against New York, somebody comes along and paints the poles with a slow-drying brand of sticky black paint. When exhaustion, thirst or hunger finally drives the freeloaders down, they have to slide through the wet black goop, ruining their clothes.

Soden’s tactics work, and on August 9, more than six thousand people shell out full price — fifty cents apiece, and another twenty-five cents to sit in the grandstand — to see the start of the last big series between the great antagonists, the two best teams in baseball, the Providence Grays and the Boston Beaneaters.

For this afternoon’s opener, both clubs send out their aces — Old Hoss Radbourn for the Grays, Charlie Buffinton for the Beaneaters — and, though both men have been worked hard in recent days, a gripping pitchers’ duel ensues. “It was one of those games for which the Bostons and Providences have become famous this year,” the Boston Globe marvels. “A stubborn contest, marked by wonderful exhibitions of pitchers’ skill on both sides, and containing plays in every inning which produced long and loud applause.” The Providence Journal calls it “the great game of the season.”

Paul Hines starts it off by smashing a ferocious shot past Buffinton’s head — “so close that he must have heard it sing,” the Globe quips — into center field. But Buffinton quickly picks off Hines at first base, and that is that. In their half of the inning, the Beaneaters put men on second and third with one out, but Radbourn bravely strikes out Burdock and Morrill to get out of the jam. Inning after scoreless inning follows, as both pitchers stubbornly refused to relinquish a run.

Unable to crack Buffinton by swinging away, Providence’s sparkplug, Cliff Carroll, tries something radically different. He leads off the eighth by squaring off with his bat and tapping a bunt down the first base line — such a rarity that “the great gathering roared with laughter” when Carroll beats it out to first base for a hit. Years later, Arthur Irwin recalls that when Carroll tried out that first bunt, “the entire Boston team simply stood and looked at it and then looked at Carroll who could have made two bases if he had tried.” The crowd may have laughed, but not everybody appreciates the play. “A vigorous striking out is preferable to a baby blow with the bat,” one reporter gripes.

With speedy Carroll taking a lead off first, Irwin then drives a long fly to right, seemingly good for extra bases. But Boston’s Bill Crowley dashes for the sphere and, somehow, catches it on the fly — as Carroll is tearing around the bases. Crowley pegs the ball to first to catch him easily in a double play, ending that threat, to an explosion of cheers and a rising chant of “Crowley! Crowley!”

Through nine innings, Buffinton has pitched a near-perfect game, retiring twenty-seven men in twenty-seven at-bats. Through ten, the score remains 0-0.

Buffinton strikes out Carroll to open the eleventh, and Grays shortstop Arthur Irwin, who is 0-and-3 on the day and has struck out twice, digs in at the plate. A scrawny little hitter who has thinning light hair, pale beady eyes and stick-out ears, Irwin is far from a slugger. He will end his big-league career with only 5 home runs in 3,871 at bats.

This time, he gets the sweet spot of his bat on the ball and drives it deep to right field, toward the rotting fence with the slat-work on top. There is a hole in the shabby old wall where it connects with the addition, six feet above the ground, an opening not much bigger than a baseball, and when Irwin “came to bat he set his eye on that hole, and aimed for it,” Bancroft claims.

The Boston outfielders scoot to take the rebound, hoping to throw out Irwin at second, or at least hold him to a double. But the carom never comes. “Without taking even a splinter off the board the ball shot through the hole and disappeared,” Bancroft marvels. Irwin sprints around the bases and stomps on home plate while the Grays holler and jump for joy, and the Boston men stare, shocked, or shake their heads in disbelief, foiled by an act of God.

In the bottom of the eleventh, Radbourn, who has thrown a two-hitter, retires three men in succession, for an extraordinary 1-0 shutout to pick up his 30th victory of the season.

The loser has pitched no less brilliantly, leading one columnist to muse over how dominant a team might be if it could obtain both Buffinton and Radbourn. “Now that would depend,” the Fall River Daily Evening News responds with its usual sneer. “It would not do for the band to be called out when Buff. got a victory, for Rad. would start the horn of discord to blowing” – a reference to Radbourn’s jealousy when a brass band had greeted former teammate Charlie Sweeney.

In any event, Irwin’s hole-in-one has given Providence a two-game lead in the Nayional League standings, putting Boston under intense pressure to gain back ground. “But is it not about time for Providence’s annual ‘go to pieces’ to take place?” the Evening News asks. Not a bad question, since the Grays have blown late-season leads in 1882 and 1883.

RADBOURN’S RECORD: 30-9.

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