The series of short oral histories originally called "My Biggest Baseball Day," first appeared in the Chicago Daily News on January 23, 1943, and became a periodic off-season feature through at least 1950. The initial plan was for the paper's sportswriters to describe their most memorable baseball experiences, but the articles proved so popular the News decided to reach out to players for their stories. Almost all of the roughly 175 or so articles cover games played in the first half of the twentieth century, divided relatively equally between the Deadball Era (1901-1919), the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. However, in a stroke of good planning or good fortune, the paper was also able to interview three nineteenth-century players, recording some of the earliest known baseball oral histories.
Bobby Lowe
One of the three was Bobby Lowe (1865-1951) who spent the first twelve of his eighteen-year major league career with the Boston Beaneaters, the predecessor of today's Atlanta Braves. Primarily a second baseman, Lowe was a key contributor to the Boston teams that won four pennants during the 1890s. Perhaps not surprisingly Lowe chose his greatest baseball day from the 1894 season when he hit .346, well above his lifetime .273 average. Like Al Simmons almost 40 years later, Lowe's most memorable day came as part of a Decoration Day morning-afternoon doubleheader. As frequently happens in these oral histories, the account of a great, in this case, record-setting achievement is enriched by insights into what baseball was like so many years ago. In this case, note how close the sportswriters sat to the bench or dugout.
Bobby Lowe's Biggest Baseball Day as told to John Carmichael
I hit four home runs in one game; two in one inning! It happened in Boston, on May 30, 1894. Ed Delahanty of the Phils did the same thing two years later and Lou Gehrig came along with four almost forty years afterwards, but I did it first. [Through 2023, 18 major leaguers have hit four home runs in a single game].
I’m 75 years old now [Lowe's story was published in the Chicago Daily News on February 23, 1945], so that pleases me more now than then . . . particularly because two homers came in one inning. None of the others did that!
My first professional ball game was played at Newcastle, Pa., in 1887. I wasn’t a heavy hitter and I wasn’t a big man, but in 1890 Frank Selee, who ran the Boston club, took me over there and I stayed 12 years at second base.
Those were the days when we had only one league of 12 teams . . . with Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Brooklyn, St. Louis, Louisville, Chicago, Cincinnati and Washington in it. [Cleveland, Baltimore, Louisville, and Washington dropped out after the 1899 season reducing the National League to eight teams].
Sportswriters used to say there’d never be another infield combination like Tenney, Collins, Long and Lowe . . . they called me Sir Robert . . . but I always thought that Connie Mack had a pretty good one too with [Home Run] Baker, [Stuffy] McInnis, [Jack] Barry and Eddie Collins.
When I started big-league ball there were pitchers like John Clarkson and Tim Keefe and Kid Nichols and Elton Chamberlain and before I was almost washed up, around 1905, I’d batted against Amos Rusie and Cy Young and Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson.
Rusie pitched from 50 feet instead of the 60 as nowadays and it was like hitting at lightning. Keefe threw slow balls that hung over the plate until you broke your back hitting at ‘em.
I always thought Nichols belonged right in the same Hall of Fame [he was selected in 1949] with Young and the others, so maybe that’s why I’m proud of winding up 18 years with Boston, Detroit and the Cubs with a batting average of .299. [Lowe's actual lifetime average was .273].
Maybe baseball has changed in some ways after all these years . . . the crowds are bigger and the salaries are higher, but the game is still the same. If you don’t outguess the pitcher, he’ll fool you.
But there . . . I’m kinda getting away from what you want to hear . . . my biggest day. Well, Cincinnati came to town that May 30 for morning and afternoon games. We were in third place, only about three games out of the lead.
The morning crowd wasn’t too big, but we won 13-10 with a fellow named [Tom] Lovett pitching against [Tom] Parrott. I was leading off, as usual, and didn’t get a hit.
Before the afternoon game, Mrs. Lowe and myself had dinner at the old North Railroad Station . . . a fish dinner. I always liked fish. Then it was time for me to get back to the park. There were about 8,000 fans jamming the stands and Nichols, then pitching for us, was facing Chamberlain who I mentioned before.
We played those days at the old Congress Street grounds where the Boston team of the old Players League played in 1890. [Boston's home field South End Grounds was destroyed by fire on May 15, 1894, forcing the Beaneaters to play 27 games at the Congress Street grounds]. Some of our parks today aren’t any larger than that old spot. [Both parks had short left field lines at 250 feet.]
I didn’t get on base in the first inning, but we got two runs. So did Cincinnati. Nothing happened in the second, but in the third, I was up first again and hit over the left-field fence.
A fellow named ["Bug"] Holliday [Holliday hit two home runs of his own] was playing left for Cincy and he went back a few steps and then stopped because he saw it was no use. The fans whooped it up and you’d oughta heard’em before the inning was over. We got nine runs off Chamberlain . . . he wasn’t taken out like they do now when a pitcher gets hit hard . . . and by golly I came up again with [Jack] Ryan , our catcher, on base and hit another homer over Holliday’s head.
I felt pretty good about that and when Selee was grinning all over. Nichols got up off the bench when I came in and shook hands and hollered to the sportswriters over to one side of the stands: “Ain’t that a record . . . in one inning?” I don’t suppose they knew. I didn’t although I thought it was pretty good.
But you should have heard that crowd when I came up in the fifth and hit another homer. Three times up, three homers! The third went by over the fence about 20 feet and was almost on the exact line of the other two.
Holliday was hollering at me as I went around the bases, but I couldn’t hear a word. The fans were jumping up and down and Selee was telling everybody I’d tied Ed Williamson, Cap Anson and Dan Brouthers who also hit three in one game.
As I walked to the plate in the seventh the crowd was yelling: “Four . . . four, Bobby . . . hit another one . . . “and danged my soul if I didn’t. I almost fell down when I saw the ball going for that fence the fourth time."
It wasn’t six inches either side of where the other three went and Holliday threw up both hands and ran back to see by how much it would clear. He said afterwards the ball was about 10 feet above the fence.
By the time I’d circled the bases there were silver dollars and other coins lying on the ground. They were all for me and we held up the game to gather ‘em up.
I got about $100 altogether and a Boston newspaper talked of giving me a purse of $1,000 but I never got it. We won the game, 20-11 and a funny thing was when I came up in the ninth, for the fifth time, I hit a single.
Everybody laughed. I suppose it did look silly . . . after four homers.
Next up - in the heat of the 1915 pennant race, Philadelphia Athletics pitcher, Tom Sheehan has a strategy to retire the Red Sox in the ninth inning but forgets a certain left-handed hitting rookie.
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