Edward Achorn

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

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Some three thousand people, a big Thursday crowd, pack the Messer Street Grounds for another nerve-wracking game in a series that will, in all likelihood, decide the National League pennant.

Amazingly, Old Hoss Radbourn answers the call to pitch in his fourth straight game, while Boston passes over the risky Jim Whitney and sends out the tired Charlie Buffinton.

Buffinton draws a big crowd of cheering supporters from nearby Fall River, including the tart-tongued sports editor of the Evening News. Not to be outshone in their idol worship, Providence fanatics arrange for the surprise presentation of a lavish bouquet to center fielder Paul Hines when he steps to the plate in the first inning.

The Grays star grins and doffs his cap, but “while Paul was admiring the gift,” Boston Captain John Morrill steps up and insists on inspecting Hines’s bat. Finding that it “was inclined to be a spring bat” — perhaps the kind of rattan-loaded weapon that Cap Anson had used earlier in the season — Morrill persuades the umpire to take it away from the duplicitous ballplayer. Hines seems unruffled. He hands off the flowers, gets his old bat and then drives a single into center field. But he cannot score, and just as in the first three games, another pitchers’ battle ensues.

Through seven innings, the game is scoreless. In the eighth, the Grays’ Barney Gilligan gets a walk. Paul Revere Radford tried to bunt him over to second, only to see Buffinton pounce on the slow-moving ball and gun out Gilligan at second. But Radford manages to advance to scoring position nonetheless, scampering to second on a passed ball. The bouquet man, Hines, then drives the ball into left field, as Radford raced for home, barely beating the throw by Joe Hornung to break the scoreless game, giving Providence a 1-0 lead. Hines recklessly sprints for second base on the play, and would have been out on Hackett’s perfect throw, had Burdock not dropped the ball.

When Jack Farrell drives another single to left field, Jerry Denny — coaching at third — notices Hornung is taking his time to get to it, and frantically waved home Hines. But Hornung, it turns out, “was playing Fox on Hines,” the Boston Globe observes, and he guns him down at the plate.

Thanks to Radbourn, Providence is able to take its precious 1-0 lead all the way into the ninth inning, needing only three more outs to sweep the series. “Radbourn now began to put on steam,” the Globe observes.

It is a fair question how much steam he might have left after four straight games of brilliant work against Boston. Mert Hackett throws a scare into the Providence crowd when he leads off the ninth inning with a line shot to right field, but the speeding Radford captures it in his bare hands. Ezra Sutton hits a grounder to second that Jack Farrell deftly scoops up, retiring him at first.

Boston is down to its last out when the fireworks began. “John Morrill stepped to the plate, waited for a good ball, got one where he wanted it and sent it away for a single,” the Providence Journal reports. Whitney spits on his hands, stands in, and follows Morrill’s example, driving him to third with a single. Whitney quickly steals second, and Hornung, the club’s slugging left fielder, come to the plate with two runners in scoring position, and two men out. A hit can win the game. Cries of “Now, Joe!” erupt from the Boston faithful.

Hornung gets his pitch, and slams the ball down the first base line. As Joe Start races for it, the ball takes a vicious hop and soars over his head. Start leaps up, plucks it from the air, and comes down on the bag to end the game, the series, and quite possibly, Boston’s season. “A shout went out from those Providence throats that was never heard before,” the News reports.

Next to capturing the pennant, there is nothing Grays fanatics love more than New England bragging rights for winning the season’s series against the hated Beaneaters, nine games to seven.

The Providence Star is giddy and eager to gloat. “Good-by, Fall River delegation, your presence has been the means of urging on Buffinton to ‘knock us out,’ and as he has not done it, we will shake hands over the ‘bloody chasm,’ thank you for your attendance, dollars and kindly cheers, that availed not a whit in the long run, and will be pleased to see you next year. Ta-ta! Ta-ta, Mr. News.”

The News editor responds in kind: “Mr. Star seems happy. And it is refreshing to note the contrast between this happiness and his usual sniveling, snarling and snapping peevishness when the Providences lost a game.” The editor seems especially irritated by the praise being heaped on Arthur Irwin for his hole-in-one homer. “The Providence scribes are lubricating Irwin all over with taffy,” he noted, but given the fickleness of Providence crowds, he warns Irwin not to suffer a slump, “for you’ll be lashed with a salted thong if you do.”

The Fall River writer complains that Providence’s low-class fanatics have unduly influenced the outcome by screaming at the Beaneaters, and pressuring the umpire to punish the visiting pitcher for stepping out of the box. Hub crowds, by contrast, have comported themselves with dignity, and expressed just appreciation of good baseball. “Boston audiences are behind the times,” he noted sarcastically. “They can’t begin to sustain their club with Comanche yells and low bred jockeying, as can the Providence audiences.”

The columnist at the Boston Globe, by contrast, feels no bitterness over the sweep, “for a better-played string of games has never been witnessed in the history of the National League.” The Sporting Life concurs, noting that all 16 games between the New England clubs have been gems, “magnificent contests, and fortunate indeed were the people who witnessed them. They have had the cream of the season.”

Radbourn is the cream of the cream. In one of the game’s legendary pitching performances, Old Hoss has thrown every inning of all four games of a critical series against his toughest adversary. In those 38 innings of ball, he has won four games, surrendered no earned runs, and collected three shutouts. The great workhorse, tortured by arm and shoulder pain for much of the season, simply could not have been more dominant. Boston is now five laps behind, perilously close to dropping out of the pennant race. The Telegram does not even resent the raider Lucas anymore for stealing away Radbourn’s star pitching mate, Charlie Sweeney. “Providence people have great cause to thank him for relieving us of such a great noodle as Sweeney,” it laughs.

But can the Grays keep it up with one pitcher? “On Radbourn will fall the brunt of the battle for the Providences,” the News notes. “It will be wonderful if he can stand the strain.” Should his arm give out, or Boston’s luck turn a little bit, the pennant can be wrested from the Grays, as usual. “Will the Providences go through the season without a grand and lofty tumble?” the writer asks. “Manager Bancroft has never yet seen that pennant fly proudly over his domains. Now or never, Frank!”

No one knows what the future holds, but what Radbourn has achieved already is astonishing: thirty-three victories by mid-August, with two months of baseball left to play. And though Sweeney has begun to dazzle Union Association crowds, Radbourn has won back Providence’s affection.

Now he faces an agonizing ordeal: eight final weeks of work, a last hard drive to win his release, position himself for big money as a free agent, and show everyone, Carrie included, that he is a great man — maybe the greatest pitcher there ever was.

RADBOURN’S RECORD: 33-9

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