Game 26, Played Sunday, May 4, 1924 (2nd game rained out)

The Seattle Indians played their 26^th game of the 1924 season on Sunday, May 4. This was the final game of the fourth series of the year for the Indians, and their second series against the Salt Lake City Bees. The season had started out in Los Angeles against the Angels, followed by a trip to Salt Lake. The Tribe then wandered via train back to Seattle to open their home season against the Sacramento Solons, followed by another home series against Salt Lake. This most recent weekly stretch concluded with Seattle losing 6 to 3 to the visiting Bees. The second game was called in the third inning for rain, thus giving the series win to SLC, 4 games to 2. This put Seattle's record at 11 wins and 15 losses.

Just as a reminder, in the PCL of the 1920s, each team played a week-long series against their respective opponents. Generally, each series would run Tuesday to Sunday, ending the week with a double header. Then Monday was a travel day, with travel at that time meaning by train. Sometimes, depending on circumstances, you'll see a series go into Monday, but that's only if the following series between all teams involves a close distance, like Oakland/San Francisco or Vernon/Los Angeles. Rain-outs were difficult to make up, so winning percentage was a very important factor in determining which team won the League. Generally, each team ended up playing between 195 and 210 games in a given year. After four weeks of play, here's where the Pacific Coast League standings stood.

      Team               Wins       Losses      PCT

San Francisco         19             9            .697

Vernon                    18           10            .643

Salt Lake                14            12            .533

Portland                  14            13           .519

Los Angeles           12            16            .429

Oakland                 12             16           .429

Seattle                    11             15           .423

Sacramento             9              18           .333

For the fourth week, here's the results of each series:

Salt Lake 4, Seattle 2

Portland 5, Sacramento 1

San Francisco 6, Los Angeles 1

Vernon 5, Oakland 2

Where they will play for the fifth week:

Portland at Seattle

Sacramento at Salt Lake

Vernon at San Francisco

Oakland at Los Angeles

If you'll notice the scheduling, its almost like Pac-8 (10? [12]) basketball. A team like Vernon, which is in the Los Angeles area (and had been in a territorial dispute with the Angels over LA that required the intervention of Kennesaw Landis), would travel via train from LA to the Bay Area, play Oakland for a week, then take the short travel to San Francisco. LA would go to SF and Oakland. So its kind of the same travel that UW and WSU will do, going to play UCLA/USC on the same weekend, except the stay is a week at a time.

Sacramento's early season pitching seems to have been a blessing for whatever team faces them. The other thing I noticed is Los Angeles seems to always get clobbered in one side of a Sunday double header. But yes, Sacramento's pitching had caused a surge in the Indians' batting statistics, followed by a decline against Salt Lake. You can see from the compiled weekly stats that Frank Tobin, Brick Eldred, and Ted Baldwin were the main threat the Tribe had to smoke out the Bees. Although, if you look at Ray Rohwer, he was still putting forth close to a .500 OBP for the week, depending on how you look at the sacrifice hits, even if it was only one base at a time. Ted Baldwin's three walks gave him 12 times on base in 22 plate appearances. The sacrifice hit is something I think needs to be looked at more in regard to Wade Killefer's managerial approach. The Indians would sacrifice alot, it was obviously a part of the manager's game. However, I'm not so sure about how the official scorer awarded that and thus it would be hard to formulate an OBP that would calculate the same as today's interpretation of the OBP stat.

In this particular game, which turned out to be the Sunday finale of the series, there was a 'first inning onslaught'. Here's the box, I think the marking of Frederick at LF was wrong. He was a centerfielder and Duffy Lewis was, of course, a great left fielder:

Salt Lake-                   AB  R  H  PO   A   E

Vitt, 3B...................      5    2   2   1     2    0

Frederick, LF (CF?)..   5    1    2   6     0    0

Sheehan, RF............    4     0    2   3     0    0

Lewis, LF................    2     1    0   3     0    0

Leslie, 1B................    5     1    1   7     0    0

LaZerre, SS.............    5     0    2    3    0    0

Pittenger, 2B...........    3     1    1    3    0    0

Peters, C.................     4    0    1    1     1    0

McCabe, P..............     3    0    0    0    2     0

Totals ........                36   6   11   27   3    0

Seattle-                       AB  R  H    PO   A   E

Lane, CF.................     5   0    0     3     0   0

Brady, 2B...............     4   0    1     0     5   0

Crane, SS...............     4   1    1     0     1   1

Eldred, RF..............    4    2    2     1     1   1

Bowman, 1B..........    4    0    1   13    0    0

Rohwer, LF.............   2    0    0     2    0    0

T. Baldwin, 3B.......   4    0    1     3     4    0

Tobin, C..................   4    0   1     5      0    0

Sutherland, P..........    0    0   0     0     0     0

Gregg, P..................    3   0   1     0     4     0

*Welsh....................    1   0   0     0     0     0

Totals ........                35  3   9    27    15    2

*Batted for Gregg in the ninth.

Score by innings:

Salt Lake ...... 5 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 ---- 6

        Hits ...... 5 1 0 1 0 2 1 0 1 ----11

Seattle     ...... 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 ---- 3

    Hits     ...... 3 1 0 0 0 2 2 0 1 ---- 9

Summary: Innings pitched—By Sutherland, nothing

plus. Charge defeat to Sutherland. At bat—Off Sutherland, 3.

Hits batted—Off Sutherland, 3. Runs scored—Off Sutherland, 2.

Runs responsible for—Sutherland 4, Gregg 2, McCabe 3. Struck out--

By Gregg 5. Bases on Balls—Off Sutherland 1, Gregg 3, McCabe 2.

Stolen bases—LaZerre, Frederick. Three-base hit—Frederick. Two-

base hits—Eldred, Bowman, Sheehan, Leslie. Sacrifice hits—Pittenger 2,

Sheehan. Runs batted in—Frederick, Sheehan 2, Pittenger, Peters 2,

Bowman 2, T. Baldwin. Time of game—1:45. Umpires—Phyle

and Schaller.

The days news also featured a story about golf, which I include here because it features Wade Killefer talking about how golfing got him in trouble with Cincinnati and apparently ended his time there. He was traded to the New York Giants along with Buck Herzog for Christy Mathewson, Bill McKechnie and Edd Roush. I'm not sure, but has another player ever been traded for three hall of famers?