Way back in the 1880’s, two major league baseball pitchers threw perfect, no hit, games. They were Lee Richmond and John Montgomery Ward but very few of us have ever heard of either one of them even though Ward is in the MLB Hall of Fame.
But, the rules were a bit different back then and the standards were not the same. In the modern era of baseball, say, after 1900, the first perfect game was thrown by one of the most famous pitchers in the history of the game, Cy Young. He was playing in Boston for the team that would eventually be called the Red Sox and have one of the greatest team traditions in baseball.
These days, outstanding MLB pitchers can win the Cy Young Award which is one of the most coveted prizes in baseball. Cy Young was one of the greatest players to ever play on a major league baseball diamond.
On May 5, 1904 Cy Young was on the mound when Boston hosted the Philadelphia Athletics who were 81 game winners that year and featured slugger Topsy Hartsel who led the American League in walks and Harry Davis who played first base and won the MLB home run title each year from 1904-1907. So, Young was not facing any slouches out there that day.
Going into the game, the Boston Rustlers, as the team was called in those days, were off to a great start that year with 11 wins in 14 games when the Philadelphia Athletics came to play ball at the Huntington Avenue Grounds that day in May. Young pitched his no hitter and the Rustlers offense provided 3 runs and the team moved up to 12-3.
Young pitched the first no hitter in the history of modern baseball that day during the second game nine full innings, no hits. He struck out both Hartsel and Davis that middle contest. All told, Young struck out 8 others during that game.
However, the truly amazing thing about the feat was that Cy Young also pitched eight hitless innings between April 25th & 30th going into the May 5th game and then proceeded to pitch an additional 6 hitless innings in his next outing.
Add ‘em up, Cy Young put together a total of 23 hitless innings in a row.
That’s one record that will likely never be broken.
