June 19: The Bygone Days of Doubleheaders

The Main Event

• June 19, 1927 – Phillies pitcher Jack Scott pitches both games of a doubleheader in Cincinnati and goes the distance in both. He beat the Reds 3-1 in the first game, but lost 3-0 in the nightcap. No pitcher has recorded two complete games in the majors in a single day since.
• June 19, 1929 – The Phillies and Giants play a doubleheader at Baker Bowl that ends 7 hours and 42 minutes after the start of game one — the longest twin-bill of the 1920s. The Phillies lost the first game 15-14 after 11 innings and 3 hours and 25 minutes of play, then took another 2:25 to drop the nightcap 12-6 in 9 innings.

Long before pitch clocks, six-man rotations, and bullpen specialization, doubleheaders were simply part of doing business in Major League Baseball. The Philadelphia Phillies, often a second-division club through the 1920s, played dozens of twin bills a year, and two of the most memorable happened to fall on the same calendar date two years apart: June 19, 1927, and June 19, 1929. One produced a pitching feat that has never been matched since. The other produced a slugfest so long it became the longest doubleheader of its decade. Together, they offer a window into an era of baseball that looked nothing like the modern game.

Jack Scott’s Ironman Doubleheader in Cincinnati (June 19, 1927)

On a Sunday afternoon at Cincinnati’s Redland Field, Phillies right-hander Jack Scott did something that has not been duplicated by any major-league pitcher since: he started and completed both ends of a doubleheader. Scott, a 35-year-old knuckleball specialist who would finish the 1927 season with a 9-21 record on a Phillies team that lost 103 games, pitched all the way through both games against the Cincinnati Reds, throwing a combined 17 innings in a single afternoon.

In the opener, Scott scattered six hits and walked just one batter, leading Philadelphia to a 3-1 victory in one hour and 42 minutes. He out-dueled Reds left-hander Jakie May, who took the loss to fall to 4-5 on the season, while Scott improved to 4-7. The Phillies plated their three runs in the fourth inning, and that was all the offense Scott needed. Philadelphia finished the opener with 10 hits to Cincinnati’s six, though both clubs would feel the effects of the long day to come.

The nightcap told a very different story. Cincinnati turned the tables on Scott, who again went the distance, but this time on the losing end of a 3-0 final that took just one hour and 19 minutes to play in front of an announced crowd of 17,293. Scott allowed all three runs but, remarkably, still finished both games having issued only a single walk across the entire 17-inning workload. Pitching twice in one day was not unheard of in that era, but going the distance in both games, especially with that kind of command, was already a rarity by 1927.

Baseball historians who have studied the feat extensively note that Scott’s June 19, 1927, doubleheader stands as the last time any pitcher threw complete games in both ends of a major-league doubleheader. Babe Ruth, Bobo Newsom (who reportedly did it four separate times), and 19th-century workhorse Joe McGinnity had all accomplished it earlier in baseball history, but the practice essentially vanished after Scott’s effort. The closest anyone came afterward was Dutch Levsen of the Cleveland Indians, who threw two complete games in a single day less than a year earlier, in August 1926 — but that predates Scott’s feat. No pitcher has even attempted to start both games of a twin bill in decades, let alone complete them, a testament to how dramatically pitcher workloads and roster construction have changed.

Scott was no ordinary journeyman. His long career included stints with the Giants, Braves, Reds, and Phillies, finishing with a 103-109 record and a 3.85 ERA. He was also a surprisingly capable hitter for a pitcher, batting .275 over his career with five home runs. Scott was no stranger to marathon doubleheader duty, either. Seven years earlier, in 1920, he had also started both games of a twin bill, and in 1921 he was part of one of the strangest doubleheader quirks in baseball history: a game in which both teams’ managers started the same pitcher in both games of a twin bill at Braves Field in Boston — the only time that’s ever happened in major-league history. Scott started both games for Boston that day, while Phillies manager Kaiser Wilhelm countered by starting George Smith twice. Neither pitcher finished either contest, but the oddity underscores how loosely pitching staffs were managed compared to today.

The context surrounding the 1927 Phillies makes Scott’s effort even more remarkable. The team was bound for a last-place finish in the National League, 43 games behind the pennant-winning Pittsburgh Pirates, with little to play for by midseason beyond pride and innings logged. Yet Scott, at an age when most pitchers were winding down, willingly took the ball twice in the same day and nearly authored a sweep. It remains one of the great forgotten feats in Phillies history — not because the team won, but because no pitcher anywhere in professional baseball has matched the underlying accomplishment since.

The Marathon at Baker Bowl (June 19, 1929)

Two years later, almost to the day, the Phillies and the New York Giants staged a doubleheader at Baker Bowl that, while lacking any individual pitching heroics, earned its own kind of historical footnote: it became the longest doubleheader of the entire 1920s, with roughly seven hours and 42 minutes elapsing between the first pitch of Game One and the final out of Game Two.

The opener was a back-and-forth slugfest that the Phillies ultimately lost, 15-14, in 11 innings — a game that alone consumed three hours and 25 minutes, an extraordinarily long time for a single game in that era. High-scoring, extra-inning affairs were taxing even without modern relief usage, since pitching staffs typically leaned on their starters to work out of trouble rather than turning to a parade of relievers.

After a turnaround between games, the Giants and Phillies returned to the field for a nightcap that ran roughly two and a half hours, with New York completing the sweep by a score of 12-6 in a regulation nine innings. An announced crowd of 8,500 stuck around Baker Bowl to watch New York pull away in the second game, which was nowhere near as close as the opener but added significantly to the day’s run total — between the two games, the clubs combined for 47 runs.

The 1929 Phillies, managed by Burt Shotton, were a team in transition. They would finish the season at 71-82, in fifth place, 27½ games behind the pennant-winning Chicago Cubs, but they had real offensive talent on the roster, including a young outfielder named Chuck Klein, who won the National League home run title that season. The Giants, managed by the legendary John McGraw, finished third at 84-67.

Baker Bowl itself deserves mention in this story. By 1929 the ballpark, opened decades earlier, was aging and cramped, and its quirky dimensions — especially a right-field wall that sat just 280 feet from home plate — contributed to high-scoring affairs becoming almost routine when the Phillies hosted offensively dangerous clubs like the Giants. The ballpark would later be remembered as one of the most hitter-friendly, and structurally troubled, venues in major-league history; it had already suffered a deadly bleacher collapse in 1903, and another partial collapse occurred in 1927, just two years before this marathon doubleheader.

What makes the 1929 doubleheader notable historically isn’t any singular play or statistical feat, but its sheer length relative to the standards of its decade. Modern doubleheaders, on the rare occasions they’re still played, are almost always scheduled as seven-inning, single-admission affairs specifically to avoid marathons like this one.

Other Phillies Doubleheaders with Memorable Twists

The Phillies’ long, often star-crossed history includes several other doubleheaders worth remembering for their unusual circumstances. One of the most bizarre came on July 2, 1993, when the Phillies hosted the San Diego Padres at Veterans Stadium in a doubleheader that had been rescheduled after an earlier rainout. First pitch for Game One came at 4:44 p.m., but three separate rain delays totaling nearly six hours pushed the opener’s conclusion to 1 a.m. Saturday, a 5-2 Padres win. The nightcap didn’t even begin until 1:28 a.m., and it stretched on for hours before Mitch Williams delivered a walk-off RBI single to end the marathon at 4:40 a.m., giving the Phillies a 6-5 win. The day-into-night-into-following-morning affair remains one of the strangest scheduling sagas in franchise history.

The Phillies have also been on the wrong end of some lopsided doubleheader history at Baker Bowl. On July 6, 1929, just weeks after the marathon described above, the Phillies were thrashed 28-6 by the St. Louis Cardinals in the second game of another doubleheader, a result that at the time set the post-1900 record for runs scored by one team in a single game (a mark that stood until the Texas Rangers scored 30 against the Baltimore Orioles in 2007). Jim Bottomley and Chick Hafey each hit grand slams that day, and the Cardinals scored 10 runs in both the first and fifth innings.

Doubleheaders Were Once a Routine Part of the Schedule

It’s worth stepping back to appreciate just how common doubleheaders were in this era compared to today. Rainouts, getaway-day scheduling, and the desire to draw bigger single-day crowds during the Great Depression all pushed teams toward playing more twin bills, not fewer. Research into doubleheader frequency shows that National League teams played doubleheaders in roughly 30 to 44 percent of all team games across various seasons in the 1930s, with the rate increasing as the decade progressed. The 1931 Boston Braves alone played a record 38 doubleheaders in a single season, and the Phillies, often among the era’s weaker and cash-strapped franchises, were frequently among the league leaders in doubleheaders played, since scheduling two games for the price of one ticket was an easy way to boost gate revenue.

That stands in stark contrast to today’s MLB schedule, where traditional, single-admission doubleheaders have all but disappeared. Modern doubleheaders, when they happen at all, are typically the result of a rainout makeup or a day-night split-admission scheduling quirk, and since 2020, virtually all doubleheaders have been shortened to seven innings per game specifically to reduce the physical toll on players and pitching staffs.

Looking back at these two June 19 doubleheaders, separated by exactly two years, offers a vivid snapshot of just how much the rhythms of professional baseball have changed. One game showcased a pitching feat that will likely never be repeated. The other showcased an old ballpark’s hitter-friendly chaos stretched out over the better part of an entire day. Both, in their own way, capture a version of Phillies baseball that simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Philadelphia Baseball Events for June 19

• June 19, 1951 – Willie Jones hits an inside-the-park grand slam to seal a 9-2 win over Pittsburgh.
• June 19, 1955 – The Phils beat Chicago 1-0 in 15 innings, their longest 1-0 victory. Jack Meyer picked up the victory, holding the Cubs scoreless over the last eight innings on just four hits.
• June 19, 1964 – Signed minor-league free agent Joe Lis, who was born in Somerville, NJ. Lis played for the Phillies from 1970-1972 and hit 13-32-.223 in 134 games. Overall, he played eight seasons in the majors for Minnesota, Cleveland, and Seattle in addition to Philadelphia.
• June 19, 1970 – In the only face off between Hall of Famers Jim Bunning and Tom Seaver, Seaver earns the win while fanning 11 and Bunning retires only two batters while allowing 7 runs.
• June 19, 1971 – Larry Bowa was credited with two stolen bases on a single play. Playing the Mets in the top of the 14th, Bowa and Oscar Gamble attempt a double steal. Bowa makes it to third, while Gamble is caught in a rundown. Bowa then advances home, scoring and drawing a throw that allows Gamble to reach second safely.
• June 19, 1972 – The United States Supreme Court rules against former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood, who had sued Major League Baseball over the reserve clause after being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. The ruling upholds baseball’s antitrust exemption, which was originally granted in 1922.
• June 19, 2000 – Randy Wolf allows a solo home run to Quilvio Veras, the last in a team-record 12 straight starts in which he yielded a long ball.

ICYMI

• Philly Baseball News – Phillies Option Andrew Painter to Lehigh Valley
• Philly Baseball News – Jersey Shore Reloads With Pitching Reinforcements

Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for June 19

• Don Ferrarese (born 1929) – Made 14 starts and 33 relief appearances with the Phillies and posted a 5-13, 3.96 mark in 1961 and 1962.
• Bruce Chen (born 1977) – Born in Panama, the Phillies acquired Chen from Atlanta for pitcher Andy Ashby. A little over a year later, he was part of the trade that brought Dennis Cook and Turk Wendell to Philly from the New York Mets. In all, he was traded four times in the span of two years. He pitched 17 seasons in the majors with 11 different teams.
• Blake Parker (born 1985) – Pitched 37 games with the Phillies in 2019 and 2020 with a 5-1 record and a 4.17 ERA.

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