10/15: Bucs Beat Big Train for '25 Title, Alleghenys Back in Business, Pittsburgh No-Hit, Stage Star Waners, Telegraph Cup

• 1881 - HD “Denny” McKnight resurrected the Allegheny Baseball Club of Pittsburgh (it had disbanded after the 1877 season) and later joined the newly formed American Association. In 1887 they joined the NL and in 1891 morphed into the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

Denny McKnight Ars Longa Art Card

• 1892 - On the last day the season, Cincinnati pitcher Charles “Bumpus” Jones no-hit Pittsburgh at League Park in his first major league start. Bumpus won 7-1, fanning three and issuing four walks. His MLB career lasted eight games and he won just one other decision. Still, he remains the only player to pitch a no-hitter in his first MLB appearance. Bill James, according to Wikipedia, gave him the distinction of being the “mathematically least likely pitcher ever to have thrown a no-hitter in the major leagues.” 
• 1900 - The Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph offered a silver cup to the winner of a best-of-five series at Exposition Park between the NL’s top two teams, the Pirates and the Brooklyn Superbas; Brooklyn won the 1900 title by 4-½ games over the Bucs during the regular season. Two future Hall of Famers faced off in the opener as NL ERA leader Rube Waddell (2.37) went against “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity, who topped the league with 28 wins. McGinnity whitewashed the Pirates for eight innings before two unearned runs in the top of the ninth cost him the shutout. Not only was he hurt by shoddy fielding, but he had been knocked out briefly the inning before during a rundown when he was accidentally kneed. He refused to come out after he regained his breath and went the distance for a five-hit, 5-2 victory. Claude Ritchey banged out a pair of knocks in a losing cause. 
• 1925 - In Game Seven of the World Series at Forbes Field, played on a muddy track soaked by a two day rainstorm, Kiki Cuyler laced an eighth-inning, two-out, bases-loaded double off Washington's Walter “Big Train” Johnson to lead the Pirates to a 9-7 comeback victory and their second World Championship, made all the sweeter by rallying from an early 4-0 deficit. Ray Kremer got the win, his second of the Series, with four innings of one-run relief after pitching a complete game win two days before. Errors by SS Roger Peckinpaugh, the AL MVP, in both the seventh and eighth innings led to four unearned runs. He had a tough Series in the field, committing a record eight errors. The Bucs became the first team to win a World Series after being down three games to one. The Series was a big financial hit‚ grossing a record-setting $1.2M. Winning shares were $5‚332.72 while the losers pocketed $3‚734.60. And though it would take awhile, Bucco manager Bill McKechnie would become the first MLB skipper to win a WS with two different teams when his Reds beat the Tigers in the 1940 Fall Classic. 

The Press captures the Game 7 Crowd.

• 1927 - Although the New York Yankees Murderers Row pushed the Pirates out of the spotlight with a World Series sweep, the Bucs strong season kept the Waner brothers on the main stage a little longer as the pair commenced a series of vaudeville appearances for the Loew movie house franchise in St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore, culminating with a $3,000 payday for a week in the Big Apple.