October 6, 1911: Cy Young's Last Game

October 6, 1911: The New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-5 at the Polo Grounds, and clinch the National League Pennant. They will play the other Philadelphia team, the Athletics, in the World Series.

Also on this day, Cy Young appears in his last major league game, starting for the Boston Rustlers (forerunners of the Braves, then named for their owner, William H. Russell). It doesn't go so well. The Brooklyn Dodgers win, 13-3, at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The old Cyclone, age 44, goes 6 1/3rd innings, giving up 11 hits. Here are the results of his last 8 at-bats: Triple, 4 straight singles, 3 straight doubles.

Young then retired, with all-time records for wins (511), losses (316), appearances by a pitcher (906), innings pitched (7,356), batters faced (29,565), starts (815), complete games (749), hits allowed (7,092), runs allowed (3,167), earned runs allowed (2,147 -- meaning, in those days of inadequate gloves, he allowed 1,020 unearned runs), and strikeouts (2,803). His records for appearances, runs (but not earned runs) and strikeouts have been broken. The rest still stand, 111 years later.

His ERA+ was 138, and his WHIP was 1.130, so he wasn't just a "compiler," lasting a long time amassing some big stats, an accusation that has been leveled against more recent pitchers like Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry and Don Sutton: He was great even by the standards of his own time.

Five hundred and eleven wins. The next-closest pitcher is Walter Johnson, with 417 -- 94 fewer. The winningest living pitcher is Greg Maddux with 355. Through the 2022 regular season, the winningest active pitcher is Justin Verlander with 235. So unless there's a change in baseball as radical as that of the Dead Ball Era to the Lively Ball Era in 1920, Young's 511 wins, and his other still-standing records, are as safe as records can be.

Grantland Rice, perhaps America's greatest sportswriter, known to write poetry about those he covered, wrote this about the man whose nickname was short for "Cyclone," which an early manager said it looked like had hit a fence Young had been pitching against:

Fame may be fleeting and glory made fade--

Life at its best is a breath on the glade.

One hero passes, another is made,

New stars arise as the old ones pale.

So when a stalwart steps out from the throng

On with the tribute, let garlands be flung--

He's to the king of them all, Denton True Young.

Young was born on March 29, 1867 in Gilmore, in east-central Ohio. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in its 2nd election, in 1937, and attended its opening ceremony in 1939. In 1945, he was interviewed by Chicago Daily News sports editor John P. Carmichael for his anthology My Greatest Day In Baseball. Young's choice was his 1904 perfect game for the Boston Americans (Red Sox).

He added, "In my last game, I was beaten 1-0 by a kid named Grover Cleveland Alexander." He was a little off: On September 7, 1911, he did lose 1-0 to Alexander, then a 24-year-old rookie with the Phillies, but he made 6 more appearances. He retired to a farm in Newcomerstown, Ohio, about 10 miles west of Gilmore, and died on November 4, 1955, at the age of 87.

The next year, baseball created the Cy Young Award for the best pitcher of the year. In 1993, a statue of him was dedicated at Northeastern University in Boston, at roughly the location of the pitcher's mound at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, the 1st home of the Red Sox. Newcomerstown dedicated Cy Young Memorial Park to him, complete with a baseball field and a historical marker.

In 1999, 88 years after his final major league appearance and 44 years after his death, editors at The Sporting News ranked him 14th on their list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, 4th among pitchers behind Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Alexander, and 1 of only 2 players who had played significant time in the 19th Century, the other being Willie Keeler. That same year, baseball fans far too young to have seen him pitch voted him onto the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

In 1949, Ogden Nash, my grandmother's favorite poet, wrote "Line-Up for Yesterday" for Sport magazine, an alphabetical list of star players. For the letter Y, he wrote:

Y is for Young
The magnificent Cy;
People batted against him,
But I never knew why.

*

October 6, 1911 was a Friday. Also on this day, Wilfrid Laurier left the Prime Minister's office in Canada, after 15 years, his Liberal Party having lost an election to Robert Borden and his Conservative Party. The 1st French-Canadian to serve as Prime Minister, and considered one of the country's greatest, he is on the Canadian $5.00 bill.

These other baseball games were played that day:

* The Boston-Brooklyn game was the 2nd game of a doubleheader. The 1st game was a 1-0 Rustlers/Braves win. Ed Donnelly pitched a 6-hit shutout.

* The Giants' Pennant-clincher was also part of a doubleheader, the 1st game. The Giants also won the 2nd game, 5-4.

* The New York Highlanders lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-4 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Highlanders officially became the Yankees, in 1913, after they had been unofficially called that for a while.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 3-1 at at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. The next year, the Red Sox moved into Fenway Park.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Detroit Tigers, 11-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Ty Cobb did not play for the Tigers in this game.

* The Cleveland Indians were supposed to play the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park in Chicago, but were rained out. They will play a doubleheader the next day.

* The Chicago Cubs, the Cincinnati Reds, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled to play.