On this date102 years ago, second-year Red Sox hurler Babe Ruth took the mound against Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers.
Ruth entered the game with a 12-6 record and a 2.86 ERA.Opponents were batting just .226/.307/.185 against him vs. his own season-slash line of .355/.420/.694, including a club-leading four home runs —no one else on the team would finish the season with more than two.
The 20-year old Ruth had struggled against Detroit to this point in his career: In three starts he had allowed 11 runs (8 earned) in just nine innings pitched.
Meanwhile, Cobb slashed.389/.504/.523 and scored 116 runs in 117 games played to that point in the season.
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Ruth would finally get it right against the Tigers, as he tossed 8 2/3 innings of one-run ball. Unfortunately, the sole run came with two outs in the ninth, and his Red Sox holding a 1-0 lead.
However, he was relieved by Dutch Leonard who finished up the ninth and then tossed four more innings of shutout ball, helping the Sox to a 2-1 victory, due in large part to the strong performance by Ruth.
What is most fascinating about this game, isthat Babe Ruth recorded his first strikeout of Ty Cobb. That fact is astounding in and of itself, but it gets even crazier.
Ruth would go on to strike out Cobb sixmore times throughout his career, includingonce with the Yankees, in a spot start on June 13, 1921—oddly enough Cobb was Ruth’s only strikeout that day.
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In all Babe Ruth’s seven strikeouts of Ty Cobb account for nearly 1.5 percentof Cobb’s career strikeouts.
Certainly 1.5 percent doesn’t seem like all that much —until you consider that of Ty Cobb’s 13,087 career plate appearances,only 76 came against Babe Ruth.
In all, here are the dates of each of Babe Ruth’s strikeouts of Ty Cobb (overall results):
- August 25, 1915 — 8 2/3innings pitched, 1 earned, 5 strikeouts;
- July 31, 1916 —Nineinnings pitched, complete game shutout, 6 strikeouts;
- September 21, 1916 – Nine innings pitched, complete game victory, 2 earned, 4 strikeouts;
- May 11, 1917 — Nine innings pitched, complete game victory, 1 earned, 6 strikeouts;;
- July 11, 1917 —Nine innings pitched, complete game shutout, 8 strikeouts;
- August 27, 1917 —Eight innings pitched, complete game loss, 4 earned, 2 strikeouts;
- June 13, 1921 —Five innings pitched, 3 earned, 1 strikeout.*
*Fun fact: Ruth actually passed Ty Cobb in career home runs before he last struck him out with his 69th career homer on June 23, 1920. In fact, Babe Ruth finished his career with more home runs against the Tigers (123) than Cobb had for the Tigers (111) and even more than he had total in his career (117).
