The Main Event
- August 13, 1939 – The Yankees routed the Athletics 21-0 in the second game of a doubleheader at Shibe Park, the worst home defeat in franchise history.
- August 13, 1939 – Phillies pitcher Bill Kerksieck gave up six home runs in a game against the Giants, four of them in one inning, tying two major league records, in an 11-2 loss.
Philadelphia has fielded a major league baseball team continuously since the 1880s, which means the city has absorbed more than its share of humbling afternoons. Few, though, compare to August 13, 1939, when both of Philadelphia’s teams — the American League Athletics and the National League Phillies — were blown out on the same day, in different cities, by two of the era’s most dangerous lineups. It was, by any measure, the worst day of baseball Philadelphia had in that entire miserable summer.
A walk-off high, then a record-setting low, for the Athletics
The day actually started with hope at Shibe Park. Connie Mack‘s Athletics, a last-place club dragging a 36-69 record into the day, opened a doubleheader against the powerhouse New York Yankees and shocked the home crowd of 34,570 (with another 10,000 reportedly turned away at the gates) by winning the opener, 12-9, on a walk-off three-run homer from catcher Frankie Hayes in the bottom of the ninth. It snapped an eight-game losing streak and was just the Athletics’ second win over the Yankees all season.
Then came the second game. Rookie right-hander Henry “Cotton” Pippen, picked up in the Rule 5 draft the previous fall after washing out of the St. Louis Browns’ farm system, lasted only two-plus innings, and reliever Nels Potter fared no better. New York scored five runs in the second inning, three more in the third, two in the fourth, five in the fifth, and one in the sixth, piling up 23 hits against the two Athletics pitchers. Joe DiMaggio drove in five runs, including an inside-the-park home run that Philadelphia Inquirer writer James Isaminger called a “masterpiece,” while Babe Dahlgren also hit two home runs, one of them a second inside-the-park shot. Yankees ace Red Ruffing, meanwhile, threw a three-hit shutout and also went 4-for-4 at the plate with three RBI himself — a pitcher beating the Athletics with both his arm and his bat.
By the time Philadelphia’s Sunday “Blue Law” curfew forced the umpires to call the game after eight innings at 6:49 p.m., the Yankees led 21-0. It stood as the most lopsided shutout in the major leagues since 1901, and remains, to this day, the worst home loss in Athletics franchise history.
A rookie’s rough debut season, and a Phillies team stripped for parts
Eighty miles north at the Polo Grounds, the Phillies were suffering their own beating. In a game against the Giants that had originally been rained out back in May, rookie right-hander Bill Kerksieck was rocked for six home runs, four of them in a single inning, tying two major league records in an 11-2 loss. It was the only season of Kerksieck’s career; he finished 1939 with an 0-2 record and a 7.18 ERA and never pitched in the majors again.
The wreckage wasn’t really about Kerksieck, though — it was about the state of the franchise around him. The Phillies of that era were owned by Gerald Nugent, who kept the club solvent by developing talent and then selling it off to contenders. Two of the most painful examples played out in and around 1939 alone: ace Bucky Walters, dealt away in 1938, went 27-11 with a 2.29 ERA for the pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds that very season, and slugger Chuck Klein, a franchise icon, was traded to Pittsburgh in June. What Nugent left on the field in Philadelphia was a team that finished the year 45-106, part of a five-season stretch from 1938 to 1942 in which the Phillies went a combined 185-534 — a level of futility that, win-loss-percentage-wise, was actually worse than the expansion Mets’ famously bad 1962-1966 teams.
Eighty-seven years later, the date returns under very different circumstances
That same calendar date with a throwback to 1939 follows for 2026, in a considerably more lighthearted way. The Phillies and Minnesota Twins are scheduled to meet in Dyersville, Iowa, for the third MLB at Field of Dreams Game, played on a ballpark built beside the cornfield made famous by the 1989 film, with the broadcast streaming live on Netflix.
For the occasion, the Phillies will take the field in gray road uniforms modeled directly on their 1939-41 look: the upward-slanting red “Phillies” script outlined in navy, red-and-navy trim running down the jersey and pants, and navy caps topped with a bold red “P” in the club’s old-style lettering. The Twins, whose franchise dates only to 1961, will counter with a throwback of their own drawn from a different decade — their original 1960s home uniform, complete with navy pinstripes and the classic “Minnie and Paul” sleeve patch.
Why the Phillies landed on 1939, specifically
The choice of 1939 wasn’t arbitrary, and it wasn’t really about the team’s record that year, either. Every jersey from that throwback set carries a replica of the sleeve patch big league teams wore across the board in 1939 to mark what was then celebrated, with great civic fanfare, as baseball’s 100th anniversary — the centennial of the Abner Doubleday creation myth that traced the sport’s invention to Cooperstown in 1839. Historians have long since debunked that story, but the patch itself remains one of the most recognizable pieces of uniform history from the era, which made it a natural, visually striking choice for a game built entirely around nostalgia.
There’s a bit of dry irony built into the pick, though: the on-field 1939 Phillies were nothing to romanticize. They were managed for most of that season by Doc Prothro, a part-time dentist who, as the Philadelphia Inquirer memorably put it that spring, had “more cavities to fill than any other team in the National League.” The Phillies lost 30 of their final 37 games and finished more than 50 games out of first place — the same lost season, in other words, that produced both Bill Kerksieck’s record-tying meltdown against the Giants and the fire-sale roster that had already shipped out Bucky Walters and Chuck Klein. The 2026 Phillies are borrowing the look of that team, not its results.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for August 13
- August 13, 1941 – Shortstop Bobby Bragan pulled off a hidden ball trick against Brooklyn, tagging out Dixie Walker after faking a throw to the pitcher; it was his second such play of the season.
- August 13, 1948 – In a game against the Giants, the first 10 Phillies batters reached base and scored, accounting for 9 runs before the team made an out, a National League record, in a 12-7 win.
- August 13, 1972 – High-wire walker Karl Wallenda traversed a cable strung between the foul poles atop Veterans Stadium between games of a Phillies doubleheader, reportedly for a $3,000 fee.
- August 13, 1983 – Released pitcher Ed Farmer.
- August 13, 1987 – The Cardinals beat the Phillies 4-2 in 13 innings without recording a single outfield putout or assist, the first time that had happened since 1899.
- August 13, 1988 – Paul Owens was placed onto the Phillies Wall of Fame.
- August 13, 1997 – Signed minor-league free agent Brandon Duckworth.
- August 13, 2010 – Mets’ knuckle-baller R.A. Dickey held the Phillies to one hit at Citi Field; Cole Hamels recorded the lone hit but took the 1-0 loss.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for August 13
- Jack Sharrott (born 1869) – A pitcher and outfielder acquired by the Phillies from the Giants in a high-profile 1893 trade that also brought future Hall of Famer Roger Connor; he made his final major-league appearance that September with Philadelphia.
- Hack Schumann (born 1884) – A pitcher whose entire four-game major-league career came with the Athletics in September and October of 1906.
- George Susce (born 1907) – A catcher who broke into the majors with the Phillies in 1929 before later playing for the Tigers, Pirates, Browns, and Indians; he later became a longtime coach and manager.
- Lou Finney (born 1910) – An outfielder who spent the bulk of his 15-year career with the Philadelphia Athletics (1931, 1933-1939) under Connie Mack before closing out his playing days with a brief 1947 stint with the Phillies.
- Tom Prince (born 1964) – A defense-minded catcher who played for the Phillies in 1999-2000 during a 17-year career spent mostly with the Pirates and Dodgers.
- Brandon Workman (born 1988) – A right-handed reliever originally drafted by the Phillies out of high school in 2007, who returned to Philadelphia via trade in August 2020 after helping the Red Sox win the 2013 World Series.
- Taijuan Walker (born 1992) – A right-handed starter who signed a four-year, $72 million deal with the Phillies before the 2023 season after making his first All-Star team with the Mets in 2021. He was released during the 2026 season with nearly $19-million remaining on his contract.
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