No-Hitters and Official Scorers
By Stew Thornley
Like their umpiring counterparts on the field, official scorers are an anonymous bunch. Fans usually pay attention to them only when a close call is made.
While this may happen more often with umpires than with scorers, the latter can at time find themselves the center of controversy, especially when a pitcher is working on a no-hitter. A hard ground ball that handcuffs a shortstop puts the scorer in the spotlight as fans and players alike wait for the decision of hit or error.
Three no-hitters in 1991—Bret Saberhagen’s, Wilson Alvarez’s, and the combined gem by three Atlanta pitchers—were dependent on a scorer’s call of error on a borderline play.
Although most scorers won’t allow the presence of a possible no-hitter to affect their decisions, some appear to subscribe to the philosophy that the first hit should be a clean one.
In 1979, Dick Miller of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner used this argument in trying to justify his attempt to help California’s Nolan Ryan complete a no-hitter against the New York Yankees. In the eighth inning, Miller charged Angels center fielder Rick Miller with an error when he couldn’t make a shoestring catch of Jim Spencer’s low liner. Even Angels vice president Buzzie Bavasi disagreed with the scoring decision and is reported to have shouted at Dick Miller: “You didn’t have to do that. You’ve embarrassed us!” The scoring call became a non-issue when Reggie Jackson finally broke up the no-hitter in the ninth with a single too clean for even Miller to rule otherwise.
At times, an official scoring decision appears to be all that stands in the way of a no-hitter. In June of 1992, the New York Mets’ only hit off Ken Hill of Montreal was a fifth-inning grounder by Anthony Young that shortstop Tom Foley was unable to control with a backhanded stab. Because he gave Young a hit on the play, scorer Bob Mann was on the hot seat after the game. (In the author’s opinion, Mann made a proper call on this play; even if he had ruled it an error, however, it should be remembered that this is no guarantee that Hill still would have completed the no-hitter.)
Scorers in these circumstances can be pressured, sometimes intensely, to change their calls. In an October 1974 game at Met Stadium in Minnesota, Toby Harrah of the Rangers reached base in the first inning on a grounder that went through Twins third baseman Eric Soderholm. Although it appeared to be a misplay by Soderholm, scorer Bob Fowler gave Harrah an infield hit. To Fowler’s credit, however, he stuck with his call as it remained the only hit off Jim Hughes until two out in the ninth inning when, to Fowler’s relief, Pete Mackanin tripled. In between these two hits, Fowler received a phone call from Texas manager Billy Martin, saying the Rangers would have no problem with a scoring switch, and repeated requests from the Minnesota dugout for him to change his decision. In one of the requests, Twins coach Bob “Buck” Rodgers asked, “Can you change the hit to an error?” Fowler’s reply: “I can, but I won’t.”
A scorer who did yield to the situation was John Drebinger of the New York Times in a 1952 game at Yankee Stadium. In the third inning, Drebinger gave a hit to Phil Rizzuto of the Yankees when Detroit shortstop Johnny Pesky bobbled his ground ball, then threw too late to first. The pitcher for Detroit was Virgil Trucks, who had already hurled a no-hitter earlier in the season.
With Rizzuto’s hit still the only one off Trucks in the seventh, Drebinger called Pesky in the Detroit dugout to get his version of the play.
“I had the ball, and it squirted loose from my glove just as I reached to take it out,” said Pesky. “I messed it up.”
Drebinger then reversed the scoring call, charging Pesky with an error and wiping out Rizzuto’s hit, a decision that brought a cheer even from the Yankee fans when it was announced and that made possible Trucks’s second no-hitter.
While such scoring changes cast doubt over the validity of a no-hitter, at least pitchers such as Trucks, Saberhagen, and Alvarez have been able to enjoy a hearty celebration on the field at the conclusion of the game.
A no-hitter by Ernie Koob of the St. Louis Browns against the Chicago White Sox on May 5, 1917 was different. Here the switch of a hit to an error did not occur until after the game.
This game took place during a prolific period for no-hitters, some quite notable, around the majors as well as between the same two teams in the same ballpark. (Three days before Koob’s no-hitter, Hippo Vaughn of the Cubs and Fred Toney of the Reds each matched nine innings of hitless ball with Toney keeping his no-hitter and winning in ten innings. Seven weeks later, Ernie Shore relieved Babe Ruth, who was ejected after giving up a lead-off walk, and retired all the batters he faced. Shore for many years was credited with a perfect game although it is now officially ruled a combined no-hitter for Ruth and Shore. On top of this, the day after Koob’s no-hitter, Bob Groom of the Browns pitched two hitless innings in the first game of a doubleheader against the White Sox, then no-hit the Sox in the second game, giving him 11 hitless innings for the day and producing no-hitters on consecutive days at Sportsman’s Park.)
The Koob game came less than three weeks after Chicago’s Ed Cicotte had no-hit the Browns at Sportsman’s Park in another gem marked by controversy because of a scoring decision. Sox first baseman Chick Gandil was charged with an error when he couldn’t handle a wicked shot by Jimmy Austin of the Browns in the seventh inning.
Now back in St. Louis on Saturday, May 5, Cicotte was Koob’s mound opponent. And while Eddie held the Browns to five hits and one unearned run, that tainted tally was enough for Koob, who held the White Sox without a hit after a first-inning single by Buck Weaver.
The hit by Weaver came on a high bounder to the right of the mound. Second baseman Ernie Johnson, according to the Chicago Tribune, “tore in and tried to pull a brilliant stop and throw, but failed.”
W. J. O’Connor, in his game account for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, although acknowledging that Johnson had given the grounder a “valorous battle,” described the play this way: “He [Johnson] first fielded it with his chest, and knocked it silly at his feet. He then laid a prehensile paw on the pill and came up with ample time to assist [George] Sisler with the out. But he suddenly lost his prehensileness, and tossed the ball over his shoulder like a superstitious person throwing salt to avoid a fight.”
Although official scorer J. B. Sheridan had credited Weaver with a hit at the time it occurred, he began second guessing himself as the game progressed. After the game, the Post-Dispatch’s O’Connor reported, Sheridan “sought sounder counsel from the umpires, the ballplayers and those who were better able to feel the pulse of the play in question.
“To a man the Browns and the enemy and the umps agreed that Johnson deserved an error and Koob a no-hit game. There was the suspicion of gang ethics, here; but the able and honorable official scorer yielded reluctantly under the preponderance of evidence and erased the hit, substituting the error.”
Exactly how long after the game it took Sheridan to reverse his decision is not clear. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch headline read, NO-HIT GAME NETS KOOB AND BROWNS ONE-RUN VICTORY: Weaver’s Drive in Opening Inning Was Scored a “Hit,” at First, but This Was Later Changed to an “Error.” But the Chicago Tribune headline, KOOB TAMES SOX IN ONE HIT GAME, 1-0, indicates that the play was still considered a hit at the time the Chicago reporter filed his story.
The game story of the May 5, 1917 game between St. Louis and Chicago in the Chicago Sunday Tribune was written before a scoring decision on Buck Weaver's first-inning grounder was changed from a hit to an error. Below is the headline from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The next day’s Chicago Tribune referred to the Koob situation in its report on the Groom no-hitter: “There was no flaw in Groom’s no-hit game. It was free from taint or suspicion which always will cling to the postmortem thing handed Koob yesterday by expunging a hit that had already been recorded.”
Meanwhile, in response to the scoring reversal in Koob’s no-hitter, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a story about a movement by St. Louis and Chicago baseball writers to “protect the official records of baseball from similar offenses in the future . . . to instruct all official scorers that their decisions cannot be reversed except in case of a misinterpretation of the rules. In other words, a hit scored in any inning cannot be wiped out any more than an umpire’s decision can be reversed after the game.”
But whether or not official scorers are prohibited from altering a decision already handed down, they will continue to make subjective judgements, sometime difficult ones, in the course of their normal duties. Usually, only the scorers themselves will agonize over these calls.
But just wait until there’s a no-hitter in progress.
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