Edward Achorn

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

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The overworked Old Hoss Radbourn wins an exhausting extra-inning battle, beating the Detroit Wolverines, 6-5, after the Providence Grays’ Carroll dashes home on Radbourn’s grounder in the bottom of the eleventh, eluding the tag.

It is Rad’s thirteenth straight pitching victory, tying Larry Corcoran’s major-league record, set in 1880.

As September begins, only Providence’s nemesis Boston remained within striking distance, six games back. Buffalo is behind by 14, New York by 15.:

Grouchy over Providence’s lead, the Fall River Daily Evening News contends that the Grays have leapt into first place only because they engage in the sort of dirty tricks scorned by their moral superiors.

Radbourn, he charges, picks off runners by committing balks that umpires fail to see. Arthur Irwin and Cliff Carroll, stymied by good pitching, have taken to making their bats go dead and dropping down bunts “to the disgust of all but admirers of ‘baby’ acts.” (The strategy is so new that sportswriters have not worked out what to call such hits; some call them “punts.”)

Catcher Barney Gilligan, on two-strike counts, gobbles up any pitch close to the plate and fires it to the infielders, before the umpire can make a call, pressuring him to sing out “strike three” for fear of receiving a chorus of boos and threats. Similarly, second baseman Jack Farrell swipes at any runner stealing a base and, with two outs, jogs off the field, intimidating the umpire into calling a third out. Paul Hines routinely “kicks” at umpires’ calls he did not like.

The Sporting Life scoffs at the criticism. “These hints and innuendos are all wrong,” the paper says. “This is good ball playing and the team should have credit for it.”

While other clubs seem to have better individual players, the Grays work in a remarkably steady, focused manner, refusing to lose their cool, even when they fell behind. “Those who watch the Providences play,” the paper observes, “rarely see any evidence that they are the least rattled.”

RADBOURN’S RECORD: 41-9

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