The Main Event

  • August 24, 1919 – Cleveland’s Ray Caldwell is struck by a bolt of lightning during his debut with the Indians against the Athletics at League Park, but recovers to get the final out and beats Philadelphia, 2-1.

Cleveland Indians pitcher Ray Caldwell stood on the mound at League Park, one out away from finishing off the Philadelphia Athletics, when a bolt of lightning dropped him flat on his back in front of 20,000 witnesses. Don’t worry, it’s not a tragic end-of-life story; but it does have a bad outcome for the Athletics.

Caldwell arrived in Cleveland with a reputation that had nothing to do with his arm. A hard-throwing spitballer out of western New York, he’d spent a decade with the New York Yankees compiling brilliant stretches — a 17-9, 1.94 ERA season in 1914 — buried under suspensions, benders, an AWOL disappearance that cost him half of 1916, and a grand larceny charge along the way. Yankees manager Miller Huggins later called him one of the best pitchers who ever lived, ruined by his own lack of discipline. Boston picked him up in 1919 and released him that July after a shaky start. Cleveland, managed by Tris Speaker, took a flier on him anyway. Speaker’s solution to Caldwell’s drinking wasn’t to ban it — it was to schedule around it, building a routine of pitch, drink, sleep off the hangover, then ease back into shape before his next start. Whatever the arrangement, it worked. Caldwell’s Cleveland debut came against the Athletics on August 24, and he’d cruised through eight and two-thirds nearly spotless innings.

Storm clouds over League Park

The Indians led 2-1 heading into the top of the ninth, the only Philadelphia run having scored on a fifth-inning grounder off the bat of catcher Cy Perkins. Rain had been falling lightly since the fourth inning, and by the ninth, dark clouds rolling off Lake Erie had turned the sky nearly black. Caldwell got the first two Athletics hitters out. He was working to shortstop Joe Dugan, the potential final out, when the storm that had been circling the ballpark let loose directly overhead.

A blinding flash tore across the diamond, and Caldwell dropped straight to the ground. His teammates, certain he’d been killed, froze in place. The lightning hadn’t confined itself to the mound — it had knocked catcher Steve O’Neill‘s mask and cap off, and blown the cap clean off Athletics third-base coach Harry Davis, who was standing near the third-base rail. Davis’ hair was so charged that when Perkins reached up to check on him, the contact gave Perkins a second shock. Players up and down the field reported a tingling current running through their legs, including shortstop Ray Chapman, who nearly stumbled running toward the mound. Umpire Billy Evans said everyone on the field could feel it. A teammate who touched Caldwell on the head reportedly leapt back, swearing the pitcher felt like he was “crackling with electricity.”

He got back up

Caldwell checked his own arms and legs, found them all still attached, and picked himself up out of the dirt. Moments later, as the rain finally broke into a downpour, he threw one more pitch. Dugan grounded it to third baseman Larry Gardner, and the game was over: Indians 2, Athletics 1. Caldwell finished with a complete game, one run allowed, four hits, three strikeouts.

Afterward he told the Cleveland Press the strike “felt just like somebody came up with a board and hit me on top of the head and knocked me down.” He walked away with only minor burns on his chest. Lightning researchers consulted decades later suggested the ballpark’s metal fencing and railings likely carried the charge toward the mound as a side flash, and that the numbness players felt in their legs was consistent with what’s known as step voltage, current traveling up one leg and down the other along the ground.

A career that never quite lived up to the moment

The lightning strike turned out to be the highlight of a genuine late-career revival. In his six starts for Cleveland that fall, Caldwell went 5-1 with a 1.71 ERA, including a no-hitter against his old Yankees teammates barely two weeks later. The Indians rode that stretch to a strong finish, though they fell three and a half games short of the pennant-winning, soon-to-be-infamous 1919 White Sox.

Caldwell stuck around for Cleveland’s 1920 World Series championship, but his own contribution was almost nothing — he started Game 3, recorded a single out, and was pulled after allowing two hits, a walk, and a run. His final big-league season came in 1921, mostly out of the bullpen, and by 1922 no major-league club would touch him again. He kept pitching in the minors for another decade, bouncing through the Kansas City Blues and Birmingham Barons, and at age 43 he out-dueled a 21-year-old named Dizzy Dean in the 1931 Dixie Series opener, throwing a shutout and driving in the game’s only run himself. He retired for good in the 1930s, worked as a railway telegrapher and bartender in western New York, and in 1961, nearly blind from cataracts and unable to afford surgery, had his sight restored for free after a Cleveland newspaper column moved doctors and former teammates to cover the cost. He died in 1967 at 79.

Apparently, lightning doesn’t strike twice

The one other story that gets passed around involves Giants outfielder Red Murray, but is mostly myth: Murray made a dazzling barehanded catch during a lightning-streaked game in 1909, and over the years the tale grew into a claim that he’d been knocked unconscious by a direct strike, which the record doesn’t support.

The sport’s other brush with lightning’s real danger came off the field entirely — former Cubs pitcher Geremi Gonzalez was killed by a lightning strike on a beach in Venezuela in 2010. Caldwell’s case remains the only well-documented instance of a major leaguer being struck by lightning during an actual game and living to pitch the next out.

Philadelphia Baseball Events for August 24

  • August 24, 1905 – The Cubs beat the Phillies 2-1 in 20 innings at Philadelphia, setting a National League record for longest game; the contest was scoreless until both teams scored in the 13th, with Tully Sparks (PHI) and Ed Reulbach (CHI) each going the distance.
  • August 24, 1910 – Despite a winning record and sub-2.00 ERA, pitcher George McQuillan is suspended by manager Red Dooin after missing a train for a road trip, his third suspension of the season.
  • August 24, 1943 – The Athletics drop their 20th straight game, losing the opener to the White Sox 6-5 to tie the American League record for a losing streak, then salvage the nightcap with an eight-run second inning to win 8-1.
  • August 24, 1967 – Dick Allen severely cuts his hand on the broken headlight of his car, severing two tendons and a nerve and ending his season.
  • August 24, 1979 – Richie Ashburn‘s uniform number 1 is retired before a game against Houston; the Phillies win 5-3 behind a Steve Carlton complete game.
  • August 24, 1981 – Released John Vukovich; signed minor-league free agent Keith Hughes.
  • August 24, 1983 – First baseman Pete Rose sits out Philadelphia’s 5-3 loss to the Giants, ending his consecutive-games-played streak at 745.
  • August 24, 1991 – Mitch Williams picks up his eighth win of the month, tying a club record and setting a mark for major-league relievers. The win came against the Atlanta Braves.
  • [Phillies] August 24, 2001 – Summer Catch, a film about a minor league ballplayer, opens; Phillies players Doug Glanville, Mike Lieberthal, Pat Burrell, Jimmy Rollins, and Ricky Bottalico appear in a major-league game scene, with Dick Allen playing a scout.
  • August 24, 2010 – Ryan Howard is ejected in extra innings against Houston after flipping his bat on a called third strike; with the bench empty, Charlie Manuel moves Raul Ibanez to first and pitcher Roy Oswalt to left, but Oswalt strikes out to end the game.
  • August 24, 2013 – The Phillies take seven hours and six minutes to lose 12-7 to Arizona, the longest game in team history by time; out of pitchers, they use outfielder Casper Wells and infielder John McDonald on the mound during a franchise-record 17⅓ relief innings across 10 pitchers.
  • August 24, 2014 – Pitcher Jerome Williams drives in Dom Brown with a safety squeeze for his second career RBI, 4,000 days after his first — the longest such gap in major-league history.
  • August 24, 2015 – The Phillies blow a 7-3 lead and allow 13 unanswered runs to the Mets; the teams combine for an NL-record-tying 11 home runs, with the Mets’ eight setting a new team record.

ICYMI

Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for August 24

  • Lou Hardie (born 1864) – A catcher who broke into the majors with the Philadelphia Quakers (the Phillies’ original name) in 1884 before playing for several other clubs through 1891.
  • Jerry O’Connors (born 1870) – An outfielder whose entire major-league career consisted of a single game for the Phillies, on July 11, 1892.
  • Jimmy Cooney (born 1894) – A well-traveled shortstop who spent part of the 1927 season with the Phillies, appearing in 76 games; he’s best remembered for turning two separate unassisted triple plays in his career, though neither came as a Phillie.
  • Bevo LeBourveau (born 1896) – An outfielder who played four seasons with the Phillies (1919-1922) and later returned to Philadelphia for a brief 1929 stint with the Athletics, making him one of the few players to suit up for both of the city’s major-league teams.
  • Rick Joseph (born 1939) – A first baseman/infielder who spent four seasons (1967-1970) as a role player for the Phillies after beginning his career with the Kansas City Athletics.
  • Kevin Correia (born 1980) – A journeyman right-hander in his 13th big league season when the Phillies signed him in June 2015 to bolster their rotation; he made a handful of starts before his final major-league appearance that July.

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