The Main Event
- August 19, 1931 – Lefty Grove beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-2, for his 16th consecutive win, tying the American League record set by Walter Johnson (1912) and Smoky Joe Wood (1912). Grove would finish the season 31-4 with a Triple Crown and the AL MVP award.
Lefty Grove’s win streak began in early June and ran through the heart of the summer, carrying the Athletics deeper into a pennant race they would win going away. Each victory pushed him closer to Rube Marquard‘s major-league record of 19 straight wins, set with the 1912 New York Giants. After tying the American League mark on August 19, Grove got his shot at history four days later against the St. Louis Browns — and it ended in one of the more famous meltdowns in baseball lore.
With star left fielder Al Simmons away in Milwaukee being treated for an infected ankle, rookie Jimmy Moore started in his place. In the bottom of the eighth, Moore misjudged what should have been a routine fly ball, turning it into a double that scored the game’s only run. Grove lost, 1-0, and his shot at the all-time record was gone. What happened next became part of Athletics legend: Grove stormed into the clubhouse and, by his own account, tore the stall lockers off the wall, shredded his own uniform, and wrecked everything in reach. He wasn’t angry at Moore. He was furious at Simmons for getting hurt on the one day Grove needed him in the lineup, and reportedly went a full week without speaking to anyone. It would be years before the two were on good terms again. Grove finished the season 31-4, adding six more wins and two more losses after the streak ended, but the 17th straight win — and the record — never came.
A historic, dominant season
Even without the record, 1931 was as complete a pitching season as the era had seen. Grove led the American League in wins (31), winning percentage (.886, still a modern AL record for pitchers with 20-plus decisions), ERA (2.06), strikeouts (175), complete games (27), and shutouts (4) — the full pitching Triple Crown, and his second in a row after also leading the league in wins, ERA, and strikeouts in 1930. No American League pitcher had done that in back-to-back seasons before him. Along the way, Grove became the first pitcher since Jim Bagby Sr. in 1920 to reach 30 wins in a season, needing just six strikeouts and five hits allowed to notch win number 30. For his efforts, Grove was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player, cementing a season that, statistically, has rarely been matched.
Grove wasn’t dominating in a vacuum. The 1931 Athletics went 107-45, finishing 13½ games ahead of the New York Yankees for their third straight American League pennant. The roster around him is remembered as one of the greatest ever assembled: catcher Mickey Cochrane, first baseman Jimmie Foxx in the midst of his own ascent to stardom, and Simmons, who won the AL batting title that year despite the injury that sidelined him in late August. Manager Connie Mack‘s club was gunning for its third consecutive World Series title, having already beaten the Cardinals in 1930 and the Cubs in 1929. Grove started three games in the 1931 World Series, winning the opener, but St. Louis rookie Pepper Martin turned into a Series-long nightmare for Philadelphia, hitting .500 with 12 hits and five stolen bases as the Cardinals won the championship in seven games. It remains one of the biggest World Series upsets of the pre-war era, and it denied Grove and the Athletics what would have been a three-peat.
Grove’s 1931 season wasn’t an aberration so much as a high point in a career full of them. He finished with a 300-141 record, a .680 winning percentage that remains the highest of any pitcher in the 300-win club, and nine ERA titles, still the most by any pitcher in history. He led the American League in strikeouts in each of his first seven full seasons. Grove was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947, and teammates and opponents alike — including Ty Cobb — called him the hardest thrower they had ever faced.
Was Lefty Grove the Steve Carlton of his day?
It’s a tempting comparison, and in some ways an apt one. Both pitchers authored the most statistically dominant single season by any pitcher of their generation, and both won their league’s Triple Crown in the process. Steve Carlton’s 1972 season with the Phillies — 27-10, a 1.97 ERA, 310 strikeouts, 30 complete games, and a unanimous Cy Young Award — is still held up as perhaps the greatest individual pitching performance of the modern era, in large part because of the team around him. Philadelphia won only 59 games all season, meaning Carlton accounted for nearly 46 percent of his team’s victories, an unmatched figure. He was, quite literally, the only thing keeping a last-place club watchable.
Grove’s greatness ran in the opposite direction. He wasn’t dragging a bad team to respectability; he was the best pitcher on the best team in baseball, part of a roster loaded with future Hall of Famers that won three straight pennants. That context makes the two seasons hard to equate directly. Carlton’s 1972 is the sport’s signature example of one man elevating a hopeless roster. Grove’s 1931 season is closer to the ultimate expression of a superstar making an already-great team nearly unbeatable. Both are Triple Crown seasons by a left-hander who was, unambiguously, the best pitcher alive that year — but where Carlton’s legend is built on doing it alone, Grove’s is built on doing it as the finishing touch on a juggernaut.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for August 19
- August 19, 1945 – Jimmie Foxx made his first career start as a pitcher, throwing six-plus innings of one-run ball in the nightcap of a doubleheader against Cincinnati and earning the win in a 4-2 Phillies victory. Primarily a first baseman, Foxx had made three relief appearances earlier that season.
- August 19, 1949 – First baseman Eddie W aitkus, shot and seriously injured the previous June, was honored by the Phillies on his return to Shibe Park with a bronzed first baseman’s mitt signed by teammates, a new car, a television, watches, and golf clubs.
- August 19, 1968 – St. Louis’ Bob Gibson struck out Dick Allen four times in a game, the seventh time that season Allen had done so — a new major league record.
- August 19, 1978 – Mike Schmidt led off a game with a home run, the only leadoff round-tripper of his career.
- August 19, 1985 – The Phillies released catcher/infielder John Wockenfuss.
- August 19, 1996 – The Phillies released reliever Mitch Williams.
- August 19, 2004 – Facing Houston with the bases loaded, Todd Pratt hit into an around-the-horn triple play.
- August 19, 2006 – The Phillies traded Andrew Baldwin and Andrew Barb to Seattle for left-hander Jamie Moyer.
- August 19, 2015 – The Phillies traded Chase Utley to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Darnell Sweeney and John Richy.
- August 19, 2018 – The Phillies dropped an 8-2 decision to the Mets in Williamsport, PA, in the annual Little League Classic.
- August 19, 2023 – Trea Turner hit two home runs in an eight-run eighth inning, becoming the first Phillie to homer twice in an inning since Von Hayes in 1985, as Philadelphia rallied past Washington 12-3.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for August 19
- Billy Milligan (born 1877) – Right-handed pitcher who appeared for the Philadelphia Athletics in their inaugural American League season, 1901, going 0-3 with a 4.36 ERA in three starts.
- Mike Murphy (born 1888) – Catcher who played 12 games for the Athletics in 1916, the bulk of a brief two-season major league career that also included a single game with St. Louis in 1912.
- Rags Faircloth (born 1892) – Right-handed pitcher who made two relief appearances for the Phillies in 1919, his only major league season.
- Bill Nagel (born 1915) – Utility infielder who played second, first, and third base for the Phillies in 1941, his lone season in Philadelphia within a career that also included stops with the White Sox and Athletics.
- Jim Finigan (born 1928) – Third baseman who had a standout rookie season for the Athletics in 1954, the franchise’s final year in Philadelphia before the move to Kansas City, earning an All-Star selection and finishing second in AL Rookie of the Year voting.
- Tim Blackwell (born 1952) – Backup catcher who appeared for the Phillies in 1976-77 before a longer run with the Chicago Cubs.
- Ron Roenicke (born 1956) – Outfielder for the Phillies in 1986-87, far better known for his later managerial career, leading the Milwaukee Brewers from 2011-2015 and serving as interim manager of the Boston Red Sox in 2020.
- Eude Brito (born 1978) – Right-handed pitcher who appeared in 11 games for the Phillies across 2005-06.
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