Yankees History: The reliever who was a hero at the plate

Yankees History: The reliever who was a hero at the plate

In one 1913 game, the Yankees were able to rally for a win thanks to the hitting exploits of … a pitcher?

Matt Ferenchick is a staff writer at Pinstripe Alley and Tar Heel Blog. He has written for PSA since 2012, lives near Scranton, and is a big fan of uncovering weird and funny baseball history.

I’ve said this many times before, but as a child of American League baseball, I’m very happy with the universal designated hitter and pitchers no longer hitting. Even beyond just preferring the AL style of baseball, pitchers on average had just gotten to a point where the stats were just far too bad to offset any “strategy” aspects that NL baseball had.

 

That being said, every once in a while, I am reminded of something amusing that happened while a pitcher was batting, and that part of it is definitely missed. If you dig back into the history books, you can find once such moment on October 4, 1913.

 

It was the final day of the 1913 regular season when the Yankees were in Philadelphia to take on the Athletics on October 4th. Despite it being so late in the season, there wasn’t really anything at stake for either team on the day. The Athletics had clinched the AL pennant with days to spare, while the Yankees went into the day with just avoiding a possible last place finish as the only thing they really had to play for.

The Yankees got off to a decent enough start, as RBI from Roy Hartzell and Rollie Zeider gave them a lead in the top of the first. However, pitcher Al Schulz then took the mound for them in the bottom of the first, and everything went awry pretty quickly. The first five A’s hitters all reached base, with a wild pitch and a couple errors mixed in there. Philly picked up one further hit in the inning after that, and by the time Schulz finally got out of the inning, the Yankees trailed 4-2.

 

While the Yankees did get a run back in the second, the A’s showed why they were the AL champions. A run each in the third and fourth and two in the seventh saw Philadelphia open up a pretty sizeable lead as they started to bring in their backups to finish off their regular season. One of those backups had been pitcher Byron Houck who walked four batters in the eighth, allowing the Yankees to get a run to trim their deficit to 8-4.

 

The Yankees had sorta just let Schulz wear it in this game, as he ended up allowing eight runs — only five earned, to be fair — on eight hits and eight walks in his seven innings. Presumably to eat up the last couple innings, manager Frank Chance sent in rookie Cy Pieh, who had only just debuted a few weeks earlier.

 

Pieh came in and immediately had one of the Yankees’ best innings of the day in the eighth, getting three quick groundouts. That set the stage for what would be a wild ninth inning.

 

Houck remained on the mound for the A’s and kept up his wild ways by walking Hartzell to start the eighth. After two singles loaded the bases, another walk to Zeider plated a run for New York. Houck then finally got an out, but it came on a Bill Holden fly ball that was deep enough for a run to tag up and score, suddenly getting the Yankees with in two.

 

Then came yet another two walks, this time to Luke Boone and Ed Sweeney. The one to Sweeney brought home another run. However, that potentially brought him some respite with the pitcher’s spot due up, and Chance decided to let Pieh take some hacks.

 

Whether it was because it was 1913 or it being the last game of the season and one that doesn’t matter and he didn’t wanted to use another pitcher, Chance didn’t use a pinch hitter in place of Pieh. Obviously, the best play to try and win the game would’ve been sending someone up for Pieh, considering that he would go down with a -19 career major league OPS+ and had a .405 OPS in the minor leagues that very year.

 

However, at least in this moment, Pieh had the at-bat of his life. The pitcher laced a double to center field, clearing the bases and bringing home three runs. After all that, the Yankees now had a 10-8 lead. Pieh came back out for the bottom of the ninth, and while he walked two batters, he finished off a second scoreless inning and a Yankees win. Elsewhere, the St. Louis Browns lost, ensuring the Yankees finished in seventh place instead of last in the AL.

 

Pieh would record just four other hits over 50 more plate appearances over the rest of his career, finishing his career with a .098 batting average. Despite that, he finished with a career Winning Percentage Added of -0.1 just because that one hit nearly completely flipped his record into the positives.

 

It would take another couple years for Babe Ruth to arrive and truly turn the Yankees into a great franchise, but on one day late in 1913, Yankees fans would’ve gotten to see one of the funnier endings to a game possible

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