Chronicling the 1918 Cubs, Part 4: Riding a Hot June to First Place

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Image courtesy of Baseball History Comes Alive (SABR/Don Stokes)

Welcome to part four of our offseason series covering the 1918 Chicago Cubs. Here are parts one through three so you can catch yourself up on everything covered to this point:

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: The Start of the Season

Part 3: Charlie Hollocher

In part four, we’ll look into how the Cubs performed in the month of June.

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Another Winning Streak

At the start of the month, the Cubs found themselves 1.5 games behind the New York Giants in the National League standings. Fresh off of a win in their last game in the month of May, the Cubs continued on to win their first four games of June. 

This set up the debut of Phil Douglas on June 6. Douglas, who was one of the Cubs’ best pitchers in 1917, suffered appendicitis in February that kept him out until now. Coming off of a season in which he pitched to a 2.55 ERA, expectations were high for the veteran. 

Behind a complete game shutout from Douglas and home runs from Dode Paskert and Charlie Deal, the Cubs defeated the Philadelphia Phillies 3-0. With that win, and a New York Giants loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Cubs were officially in first place in the National League. 

The Cubs would win their next two games, extending their win streak to eight games, and their lead in the NL to 1.5 games. This created quite a bit of buzz around their upcoming four-game series against the Giants. 

According to the New York Times, the Cubs were “the sensation of the league, and the Giants face the hardest ordeal of the season in this coming series.”

A Huge Series

As reported by the Times, game one of the series against the Giants, with Claude Hendrix and Jeff Tesreau set to be the starting pitchers, was Bat and Ball Day, where 25 percent of the gate receipts was donated to baseball equipment for WWI soldiers in France. This fundraiser, which was created by Clark Griffith, was a huge success. Per Griffith’s Society for American Baseball Research biography, over $7,500 had been raised by July.. 

Unfortunately, the first shipment was struck down by a German U-boat. Griffith persisted, however, and would end up creating another campaign that successfully sent baseball supplies, as well as copies of The Sporting News so soldiers were up-to-date on happenings around baseball, to the troops. 

Back to the series against the Giants, the Cubs were able to take game one to extend their winning streak to nine games. Down 3-2 in the ninth inning, the Cubs took a 5-3 lead via clutch hits from Fred Merkle, Charlie Deal, and Bill Killefer. “The impulsiveness of their scrappy attack carried the Giants off their feet,” the Times said in their recap the next morning. That same article continued:

“How manager Fred Mitchell has enticed this collection of ancient and youthful players to play winning ball is something of a mystery. Such familiar relics as Rollie Zelder, Dode Paskert, and Fred Merkle perform as if they had discovered some kind of a tonic which laughs at the advancing years. This young Charlie Hollocher, the former caddie boy of St. Louis, is all that they have said about him at shortstop, and is a whirlwind with his hands and feet. Charley Deal, who is no Spring chicken, manages to insert hits at the proper time, and Claude Hendrix blooms forth into a better pitching commodity than he has been for half a dozen years. The conjurer behind it all must be Mitchell, for the Cubs are the scrappiest bunch that has hit the Harlem meadow this year.”

Game two pitted Lefty Tyler against Pol Perritt. With two outs in the first inning, George Burns of the Giants stepped to the plate. According to the Times, Burns hit a ball all the way to the fence that Max Flack fell while pursuing, which allowed Burns to circle the bases for an inside-the-park home run:

”Just as the ball was about to flirt with the fence, Flack made a grab for it, but slipped in the mud and sat down suddenly. All this time George Burns was making tracks around the muddy base paths. Great hunks of mud were flying up from his spikes as he tore around the bases. Burns hasn’t run quite as fast as he did yesterday since he hustled to catch the train out of Utica to come to New York.” 

Perritt would make that stick, pitching all nine innings and allowing just six hits and two walks. The Cubs lost 1-0, and the winning streak was over. 

But the Cubs would bounce back the next day behind three hits each from Flack, Hollocher, and Merkle. After all of that, though, the series would end up in a 2-2 split. Hippo Vaughn gave up five runs in the first inning of game four en route to a 7-0 loss. This dropped the Cubs to 32-14 and their lead in the National League to 1.5 games. 

Another Win Streak to Close the Month Strong

After going 3-3 in their next six games after the Giants series, the Cubs would start up another win streak. With a victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates, a four-game sweep of the Cardinals, and a couple of wins against the Cincinnati Reds, the Cubs had won another seven in a row before closing the month with a loss and then a tie.

In the month of June, the Cubs went 19-6-1, and went from one game back of the Giants for first place in the National League to 1.5 games up on them. The offense fell off a tad, hitting for just a .262 batting average after a sterling .295 in May. It was the pitching that really carried them. 

The Cubs’ team ERA in June of 1918 was just 1.95. The addition of Douglas was huge, as he had just a 0.94 ERA to that point. With Vaughn and Tyler continuing to do their part at the top of the rotation, the pitching was leading the way for the first-place Cubs.

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