The Main Event

  • September 2, 1932 – Lew Krausse of the Athletics shuts out the Red Sox 15-0; an arm injury suffered days later in an exhibition game ends his career at age 20. Twenty-nine years later, his son Lew Krausse Jr. will throw a shutout in his own major league debut for the Kansas City Athletics.

Baseball has produced plenty of father-son duos, but no pair matched the peculiar symmetry of Lew Krausse Sr. and Lew Krausse Jr. Twenty-nine years apart, both men — pitching for the same Athletics franchise, first in Philadelphia and then in Kansas City — threw a major-league shutout without ever having faced a minor league hitter first. The father’s came in the final appearance of his career. The son’s came in his very first. Together, they form one of the strangest and most touching bookends in Philadelphia baseball history.

A teenager on Connie Mack‘s roster

Lewis Bernard Krausse was a standout at Upper Darby High School outside Philadelphia, a right-hander with a swift fastball that caught the eye of Connie Mack’s Athletics. Philadelphia signed him in 1931 and put him on the major league roster at 18, making him the youngest player in the American League. He barely pitched that year — his debut came in relief on June 11, and he didn’t make his first start until late September, after Mack had already locked up a pennant and began resting Lefty Grove, George Earnshaw, and Rube Walberg for the World Series. Given the ball against the Red Sox on September 25, Krausse held Boston to four hits and one unearned run in a complete-game, 7-1 win. It was, briefly, a glimpse of stardom.

Krausse pitched more in 1932, mostly in relief, and lived through one of the era’s stranger afternoons that July — a wild 18-inning, 18-17 Athletics win over Cleveland in which Mack, trying to save train fare on a road trip shortened by Pennsylvania’s Sunday “blue laws,” brought only two pitchers to Cleveland. Krausse got shelled early and watched veteran Eddie Rommel throw 17 innings of relief to bail the team out.

Krausse’s moment came on September 2, 1932, in the second game of a doubleheader against the Red Sox. In what would prove to be his final major-league start, he limited Boston to six hits in a 15-0 rout — the only shutout of his career. Five days later, pitching in an exhibition game against the semipro Stroudsburg Poconos, he hurt his arm. He was only 20 years old, and he never pitched in the majors again. Sent to the minors before the 1933 season, he spent the next 14 years chasing the fastball he’d lost, finishing his career with a 5-1 record and one immaculate final start.

A scout, a bonus, and a promise kept

Krausse’s post-playing life turned out to be just as consequential as his brief big-league stint. He starred for years with the Elmira Pioneers, considered by many the most popular player in that franchise’s history, served in the Army during World War II, and later became a scout — first for the Philadelphia Phillies, then for the Athletics after they relocated to Kansas City. It was in that second role that Krausse Sr. helped shape baseball’s next chapter: he was instrumental in the Athletics’ decision to sign his own son, Lew Jr., to a $125,000 bonus contract in 1961, part of what The Sporting News dubbed baseball’s “Silly Season” of runaway amateur bonuses.

Lew Krausse Jr. had piled up 18 no-hitters as an amateur around Chester, Pennsylvania, and with his father working the phones for Kansas City, the Athletics had an inside track that outbid rivals couldn’t fully overcome. Owner Charlie Finley signed him within hours of his high school graduation, with a contractual guarantee that the 18-year-old would get a look with the big league club that summer.

A debut for the ages

He didn’t wait long to cash in on that promise. On June 16, 1961 — barely a week after signing — Krausse Jr. took the mound at Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium against the expansion Los Angeles Angels in front of the largest crowd of the season to that point. Facing 32 batters, including a 36-year-old Ted Kluszewski, the teenager scattered three singles and beat the Angels, 4-0. No pitcher before him had ever come straight off of a high school diamond and thrown a major-league shutout. “We packed the park the first four times he pitched for us and probably got our money back,” Finley later admitted of the bonus he’d paid.

The instant stardom didn’t last. Krausse walked 46 batters in his first 55 innings, lost five straight decisions after that debut, and spent most of the next four seasons in the minors working on his control — a stretch interrupted by a damaged elbow that sent him to the Mayo Clinic (where, by coincidence, a fellow patient was Charlie Finley himself). Surgery followed, and so did a long climb back, punctuated by a Venezuelan winter league season in which Krausse came within a hit of a perfect game and then, a week later, struck out 21 batters in a single contest — still a league record.

By 1966, the control problems were behind him. Inserted into Kansas City’s rotation in June, Krausse won five of his first six starts and finished 14-9 with a 2.99 ERA, the best season of his career — a year also remembered for a legendary bullpen prank in which former teammate Moe Drabowsky, then with Baltimore, phoned the Kansas City bullpen impersonating manager Alvin Dark and ordered coaches to warm up, then sit down, an unwitting Krausse three times in a row.

The 1967 season brought far less fun. Finley fined and suspended Krausse over his conduct on a team flight, a dispute that spiraled into one of the most infamous incidents in Athletics history: Dark refused to enforce the punishment, Finley fired him, briefly rehired him, then fired him again after players — led by first baseman Ken Harrelson — signed a statement backing their manager. Finley released Harrelson for his trouble, prompting Harrelson to call the owner “a menace to the sport” on his way out the door and, ironically, into a pennant race with the Boston Red Sox. Krausse’s suspension was lifted within days, but the fallout — including a labor complaint from union chief Marvin Miller — lingered for months.

A well-traveled finish

Krausse remained an Athletic through the franchise’s move to Oakland, starting the very first game at the Oakland Coliseum in 1968. He later became the first starting pitcher in Milwaukee Brewers history, throwing that expansion franchise’s first shutout in 1970, before finishing his career with stops in Boston, St. Louis, and Atlanta. He retired in 1975 at 32 with a career record of 68-91 and a 4.00 ERA — a solid, well-traveled 12-year run built on the promise of that one perfect afternoon in 1961.

Lew Krausse Sr. died in 1988; his son passed away in February 2021. In 2010, Lew Jr. returned to Milwaukee to help recreate the first pitch he’d thrown for the Brewers 40 years earlier. But it’s the earlier symmetry that endures: a father whose career ended with a shutout in Philadelphia, and a son whose career began with one in Kansas City, both pitching for the same Athletics franchise, 29 years and one improbable family story apart.

Philadelphia Baseball Events for September 2

  • September 2, 1925 – The Phillies allow a team-record 30 hits to New York on the way to a 24-9 loss at Baker Bowl. Former Phillie Irish Meusel drove in nine runs on four hits.
  • September 2, 1927 – Babe Ruth hits his 400th career home run, off Rube Walberg at Shibe Park, becoming the first player in major league history to reach 400 homers — part of a September surge that carried him to a then-record 60 for the season.
  • September 2, 1975 – The Phillies claimed John Montague on waivers from Montreal.
  • September 2, 1978 – The Phillies traded Dan Warthen to Houston for Dan Larson.
  • September 2, 1989 – The Phillies traded Larry McWilliams to Kansas City for a player to be named.
  • September 2, 1992 – Terry Mulholland picks off his 14th runner of the season — future teammate Pete Incaviglia. It’s the most by any pitcher since the stat became official in 1989.
  • September 2, 1999 – In the Phils’ last game at Candlestick Park, Mike Lieberthal goes deep for his 28th home run of the year, setting a new record for Phillies catchers. Randy Wolf‘s brother Jim was one of the umpires, only the second time in major league history that an umpire worked a game involving his brother’s team.
  • September 2, 2011 – The Phillies beat Florida 5-3, upping their record to 88-46. It was the first time in team history that they recorded 42 more wins than losses.
  • September 2, 2011 – Lost pitcher Drew Carpenter off waivers to San Diego.
  • September 2, 2021 – The Phillies came back for a 7-6 win in Washington, earning a 3-game sweep. They had success there all season, earning a 9-1 record, making them the first visiting team with a nine-win season at the venue. It was also the seventh time that season that the Phillies beat Washington after trailing by 3 or more — a modern record.

ICYMI

Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for September 2

  • Joe Ward (born 1884) – A Philadelphia-born infielder who made his major league debut with the Phillies in 1906 and played parts of four seasons (1906, 1909-1910) for the club, with a brief 1909 stop with the New York Highlanders in between.
  • Rex Hudler (born 1960) – A well-traveled utility player nicknamed “Wonder Dog,” who closed out his career with the Phillies in 1997-1998 after earlier stops with the Yankees, Cardinals, Orioles and Angels.
  • Ronald Torreyes (born 1992) – A Venezuelan infielder who was the Phillies’ primary utility man in 2021, appearing in 112 games and setting a career high with seven home runs.

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