Bottomley’s 5-for-5 day helped the Cardinals rally from a 7-1 deficit after the Phillies jumped on starting pitcher Bob McGraw and a Redbirds defense that committed four errors.

Jimmie Wilson got things started for the Phillies with a two-run single in the bottom of the first. They added two more in the third inning when Cy Williams walked and scored on an error and Dick Attreau added an RBI single.

Down 4-0, the Cardinals got on the scoreboard in the fifth inning as Specs Toporcer, the first major league infielder to wear glasses on the field, hit a two-out double to right field to score Heinie Schuble.

The Phillies, however, wasted little time in responding. In the bottom of the fifth, Williams hit an RBI double, Wilson added a sacrifice fly, and Attreau hit an RBI triple that made the score 7-1.

In the top of the sixth, Bottomley started the Cardinals’ comeback. After singling in his first two at-bats, he led off with a double that hit the top of the right-field wall so hard that it ripped off the top board. Billy Southworth drove Bottomley home with a single to left and Schuble added an RBI single that scored Southworth. Wattie Holm hit a two-out RBI double to cut the Phillies lead to 7-5.

In the seventh, Bottomley hit his 10^th home run of the season over the wall and onto the site of a proposed railroad depot. With the lead down to a single run, Phillies manager Stuffy McInnis replaced Alex Ferguson with Claude Willoughby, who retired the next two batters to end the inning.

Willoughby would not be so fortunate in the eighth. Johnny Schulte led off the inning with a game-tying home run. After Schuble doubled to right for his second hit of the game, McInnis went to his bullpen again, this time calling on Jack Scott. Scott got Les Bell to ground out, but Wattie Holm hit a double to center field to score Schuble and give the Cardinals their first lead of the game.

When Bottomley stepped to the plate to lead off the top of the ninth, he was 4-for-4 with two singles, a double, and a home run. At first it looked as though he might miss the cycle as he hit a pop up behind the plate. As the Philadelphia Inquirer described it, catcher “Jimmy (Wilson) went after it, but the wind picked it up, gave the Reach a Charleston wiggle, and Jim misjudged it. On the next pitch he (Bottomley) parked the onion over Fred Leach’s new haircut for three bases.”[1]

In other words, Bottomley hit the ball over the head of Phillies center fielder Freddy Leach and reached third base safely to complete the cycle. After Dutch Ulrich retired Southworth on a pop fly, Taylor Douthit grounded to Phillies shortstop Jimmy Cooney, who threw home too late to catch Bottomley sliding into home.

With a two-run lead to hold, Bill Sherdel worked around a leadoff single to earn his first save of the season.

Bottomley was the clear star of the game as he raised his batting average 12 points to .330.

“The blows were all ‘legits,’ real base hits that whistled around the field and made Sam Payne’s orchard look like a sieve,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in a story beneath a headline declaring Bottomley a “terror with the ash.”[2]

Holm finished with three hits while Schulte and Schuble each finished with two. Vic Keen, who threw two innings of scoreless relief, earned his first win of the year. McGraw received no decision after allowing seven runs (four earned) in 4 2/3 innings.

Wilson led the Phillies with two hits and three RBIs. Attreau added two hits – including a triple – and two RBIs. Willoughby took the loss after allowing two runs in 2/3 of an inning.

The two teams continued on a similar trajectory the remainder of the season, as the Cardinals went 92-61 to finish second in the National League pennant race, 1 ½ games behind the Pirates. Philadelphia went just 51-103 to finish last in the eight-team league.

In franchise history, Bottomley’s cycle matched those of Tip O’Neill (who hit for the cycle twice in 1887) and Tommy Dowd (1895) during the team’s days as the St. Louis Browns. Cliff Heathcote, who hit for the cycle in a 19-inning game in 1918, was the first Cardinal to hit for the cycle (the Cardinals franchise officially begins with the collapse of the American Association and St. Louis’s return to the National League in 1892, making Bottomley’s the second in the team’s official records).

Bottomley finished the 1927 season with a .303 batting average to go with 19 homers and 124 RBIs. He finished 13^th in that year’s National League MVP voting. The following year, Bottomley won the MVP Award as he hit .325 and led the league in triples (20), home runs (31), and RBIs (136).

Bottomley played 11 of his 16 major league seasons with the Cardinals before he was traded to the Reds ahead of the 1933 season. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame posthumously in 1974.

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[1] Stan Baumgartner, “Bottomley Terror With Ash As Late Flurries Top Phils,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 16, 1927.

[2] Stan Baumgartner, “Bottomley Terror With Ash As Late Flurries Top Phils,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 16, 1927.

The post July 15, 1927: Jim Bottomley gets five hits, becomes second Cardinal to hit for the cycle in a 9-7 comeback win first appeared on STLRedbirds.com.

Mize’s feat marked the sixth time in franchise history that a Cardinals player hit for the cycle, joining Cliff Heathcote, Jim Bottomley, Chick Hafey, Pepper Martin, and Joe Medwick. It marked the Cardinals’ first cycle since Medwick did it five years earlier in 1935.

The game pitted two of the game’s best pitchers of the previous decade in New York’s Carl Hubbell and St. Louis’s Lon Warneke. Hubbell was a two-time National League MVP who had just been selected to his seventh career All-Star Game. Now in his 13^th season, the 37-year-old Hubbell entered the game with a 5-4 record and a 3.38 ERA.

The Cardinals countered with Warneke, a 31-year-old right-hander who finished second in the National League MVP voting in 1932, when he led the league with 22 wins and a 2.37 ERA. Warneke, who had four All-Star Game selections to his credit, was coming off a 10-inning performance in which he took the loss despite allowing just two earned runs. He entered the game with a 5-7 record despite a 2.83 ERA.

Neither pitcher enjoyed an easy afternoon on the mound. The Giants got on the scoreboard in the top of the second inning with an RBI single by Billy Jurges, but the Cardinals answered with back-to-back doubles by Marty Marion and Mickey Owen. Warneke helped his own cause with a single that scored Owen. In the third inning, Mize got his first hit of the day, a solo home run over the right-field wall, giving the Cardinals a 3-1 lead.

The Giants took the lead in the top of the fourth, chasing Warneke from the game with five consecutive hits to open the inning. After Jurges singled to give the Giants the lead, Cardinals manager Billy Southworth replaced Warneke with Jack Russell, a 15-year veteran from Paris, Texas. Russell got Hubbell to hit into a 6-4-3 double play that brought home another run, giving the Giants a 5-3 lead, before ending the inning.

The Giants added another run in the sixth after Russell walked Mel Ott and Tony Cuccinello. Jurges followed with a sacrifice bunt, and Ott scored on a groundout by Hubbell to make the score 6-3.

In the seventh, the Cardinals rallied to tie the score against a tiring Hubbell. Don Gutteridge, pinch-hitting for Russell, reached on an infield single. Hubbell walked Jimmy Brown before Martin hit a run-scoring single. Mize, who doubled to right field in the fifth, followed with an RBI single of his own to chase Hubbell from the game. Giants reliever Jumbo Brown walked Ernie Koy to load the bases before Joe Orengo hit a sacrifice fly to center field to tie the game 6-6.

The Cardinals’ Max Lanier and the Giants’ Red Lynn each retired the side in order in the eighth, and Lanier induced a 6-4-3 double play to end the top of the ninth. After Martin struck out to lead off the bottom of the ninth, Mize stepped to the plate a triple shy of the cycle. Incredibly, he got it when he smacked a drive off the concrete center-field wall 412 feet from home plate. Giants left fielder Jo-Jo Moore retrieved the ball and fired it back to the infield, but Jurges briefly mishandled the ball before relaying it to the catcher, Harry “The Horse” Danning.

Coaching at third base, Southworth saw Jurges’ misplay and sent Mize home. At first, that appeared to be a mistake. “Mize looked like a gone goose, but Danning, over-eager, despite a thin veneer of nonchalance, took his eye off the ball to see whether he’d have Mize by 10 feet or 20, and that was his undoing,” J. Roy Stockton wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “He fumbled the bounding ball, and Mize scored the winning run.”

The official scorer ruled the play a triple with an error on Danning, simultaneously taking away Mize’s RBI and giving him the cycle.

Mize’s four-hit day raised his season average to .292 and paced a Cardinals offense that finished the game with 13 hits. Lanier was credited with the win after pitching two scoreless innings in relief, while Lynn took the loss for the Giants.

In the second game of the double-header, the Cardinals again broke a ninth-inning tie with a clutch walk-off hit, this time an RBI single by Terry Moore. With the wins, the Cardinals improved to 29-41 on the season and 14-12 under Southworth, who had taken over the club midseason.

While the Giants stumbled to a sixth-place finish, Southworth’s Cardinals surged, finishing the year with an 84-69 record, good for third place in the National League.

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After falling to the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the 1926 World Series behind a complete-game, three-hit performance by Herb Pennock and two RBIs from Lou Gehrig, the Cardinals turned to 39-year-old veteran Grover Cleveland Alexander, commonly called Old Pete Alexander. Now in his 16^th major-league season, Alexander had already cemented his place in baseball history leading the league in wins six times – including 33 wins as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1916 – and leading the league in innings pitched seven times.

By 1926, however, Alexander was epileptic and an alcoholic. In The Cardinals and The Yankees, 1926: A Classic Season and St. Louis in Seven, author Paul E. Doutrich suggests that Alexander’s epilepsy may have been caused when he was struck in the head by a pitch and exasperated by his service as an artillery sergeant during World War I.[1] To minimize the seizures, Alexander self-medicated with whiskey.

Alexander was 3-3 with a 3.46 ERA for the Chicago Cubs in June 1926 when he was suspended indefinitely for violating team rules. When the Cubs waived him a few days later, Branch Rickey was out of town.[2] Instead, team owner Sam Breadon, with manager and star second baseman Rogers Hornsby’s blessing, signed Alexander for $4,000.[3] Down the stretch, Alexander went 9-7 with a 2.91 ERA, helping the Cardinals capture the National League pennant by two games over the Cincinnati Reds.

The Yankees countered with Urban Shocker, a veteran spitballer who led the league with 27 wins for the St. Louis Browns five years earlier. Shocker had gone 19-11 for the Yankees during the 1926 regular season, posting a 3.38 ERA over 258 1/3 innings.

Both pitchers threw scoreless first innings. After Shocker worked around singles from Bob O’Farrell and Tommy Thevenow in the second inning, Alexander was not as fortunate. Bob Meusel led off the inning with a single and was driven in by Tony Lazzeri. Cardinals left fielder Chick Hafey made a strong throw on the play and may have thrown Meusel out at home, but in all the noise Alexander thought O’Farrell was shouting at him to cut the ball off and prevent Lazerri from advancing to second.

After Joe Dugan singled to right and Alexander struck out Hank Severeid, the Yankees attempted a double steal and the Cardinals caught Lazerri between third and home. Alexander, however, committed a throwing error that allowed Lazerri to score the second run of the game.

“I had not pitched in 12 days and in the first two innings I had some trouble in getting started,” Alexander said. “Finally, I got the range and my arm got warmed up. After that I found I had as good control as I ever had and I just worked along smoothly.”[4]

Down 2-0, the Cardinals got on the scoreboard in the top of the third. Taylor Douthit and Billy Southworth each singled to lead off the inning, and after Hornsby laid down a sacrifice bunt, Jim Bottomley singled into right to tie the game.

With the score once again even, Alexander hit his stride. After allowing a single to Earle Combs to lead off the third, Alexander retired the next 21 batters he faced. In the fourth inning, he struck out Gehrig, Lazzeri, and Dugan in order on his way to 10 strikeouts in the game.

“Alexander had more speed than usual and his curve was breaking more sharply than usual,” Hornsby wrote in a column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “O’Farrell tells me he had more speed than he had shown all season. He also worked his change of pace very effectively.”[5]

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, Shocker was finding his groove as well. After Bottomley tied the score, Shocker retired the next 11 batters he faced.

“Shocker pitched a good game until the seventh inning but we were in a hitting mood and we were sure to find him before long,” Hornsby wrote.[6]

In the seventh, O’Farrell doubled into the left-field gap to lead off the inning and Thevenow followed with a single. Alexander popped out and Douthit flied out to shallow left field, bringing Southworth to the plate.

Southworth was another midseason acquisition for the Cardinals, who obtained him from the New York Giants in exchange for Heinie Mueller. Since arriving in St. Louis, the 12-year veteran had batted .317 with 11 homers and 69 RBIs.

“I traded Southworth for Mueller because of my friendship for Rogers Hornsby,” Giants manager John McGraw said in 1928. “Hornsby, I knew, could win a pennant if he had an old head, a steadying influence in the outfield. The Giants, I knew, did not have a chance to win, so I gave Hornsby the break and traded Southworth for Mueller.”[7]

While this was likely a convenient rewriting of history on McGraw’s part, Southworth indeed played a crucial part of the Cardinals’ success. With two on and two out, Shocker delivered a pitch that the Post-Dispatch’s J. Roy Stockton said was, “not a fast ball inside, but a half speed ball inside. Or perhaps it was a spit ball. At any rate it was inside and Southworth swung.”[8] The ball landed in the right-field seats to give the Cardinals a 5-2 lead.

Two innings later, Thevenow hit an inside-the-park home run off Sad Sam Jones to produce the final 6-2 score. With the Cardinals’ first World Series victory in franchise history on the line, Alexander retired Mark Koenig, Babe Ruth, and Meusel in order in the ninth.

“You will have to give the credit to Alexander,” Hornsby said. “He pitched a wonderful game and there wasn’t a time that every man on the team did not feel confident that Alex would be able to win. Even after the Yankees got off to their two-run lead the men were very confident and expected it in every word and action.”[9]

Yankees manager Miller Huggins agreed that Alexander, who allowed just three hits and walked one, proved the difference.

“We couldn’t hit Alexander. That’s all there is to it,” he said. “Alexander pitched an almost perfect game. He had everything on the ball and we just couldn’t connect. Against some other pitcher we probably would have done much heavier hitting.”[10]

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[1] Paul E. Doutrich, The Cardinals and the Yankees, 1926: A Classic Season and St. Louis in Seven (2021), Kindle Android version retrieved from Amazon.com, Location 1076.

[2] John Heidenry, The Gashouse Gang (2007), PublicAffairs, Page 38.

[3] Charles C. Alexander, Rogers Hornsby (2013), Kindle Android version retrieved from Amazon.com, Location 1850.

[4] Vernon Van Ness, “Alexander Deserves Credit for Victory, Both Pilots Say,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 4, 1926: Page 11.

[5] Rogers Hornsby, “‘We Will Be a Better Ball Club Every Way, Harder Than Ever to Beat,’ Hornsby Says,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 4, 1926: Page 19.

[6] Rogers Hornsby, “‘We Will Be a Better Ball Club Every Way, Harder Than Ever to Beat,’ Hornsby Says,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 4, 1926: Page 19.

[7] Paul E. Doutrich, The Cardinals and the Yankees, 1926: A Classic Season and St. Louis in Seven (2021), Kindle Android version retrieved from Amazon.com, Location 1041.

[8] J. Roy Stockton, “‘Old Pete’ Retires 21 Consecutive Batters And Fans 10 Yankees,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 4, 1926: Page 19.

[9] Vernon Van Ness, “Alexander Deserves Credit for Victory, Both Pilots Say,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 4, 1926: Page 1.

[10] Vernon Van Ness, “Alexander Deserves Credit for Victory, Both Pilots Say,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 4, 1926: Page 11.

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