This is a significant anniversary of this event — exactly six decades since this no-hitter — so I thought today would be a good time to re-visit it, especially since there’s an hour’s worth of video, and that might be the most notable thing about Jim Maloney’s no-hitter at Wrigley Field in 1965.
WGN-TV must have started recording the game in the eighth inning with a potential no-hitter happening and continued to record through the end of the game and post-game interview with Maloney. What’s most important
here is that the video actually got saved. In 1965, videotape was still fairly new and very expensive. Most TV stations didn’t keep these recordings because, well, they needed the tape for other things. This is why so little baseball video from the 1960s survives. Many thanks are due to whoever at WGN decided this was worth keeping.
In any case, Maloney was a hard-throwing right-hander who struck out a lot of guys for his time (244 in 1965, fifth in the NL) but also issued a lot of walks (110 that year, fourth-most in the league). Just how hard did he throw? Of course, we don’t know because there was no systematic way of recording it back then, but Maloney was known as one of the fastest pitchers in MLB.
He’d flirted with a no-hitter previously that year, one-hitting the Braves April 19, the only hit a leadoff single in the eighth.
While the Cubs didn’t get a hit during this Aug. 19, 1965 game, they took advantage of Maloney’s wildness. Walks loaded the bases for the Cubs in the third with two out, but Billy Williams grounded out to end the inning. Two more walks in the fourth put a runner in scoring position with two out, but Don Kessinger struck out. There were no more walks until the eighth, when Cubs starting pitcher Larry Jackson (yes, still in the game in the eighth and allowed to bat for himself!) walked and was sacrificed to second. The game was still scoreless at this time. A fly ball moved Jackson to third and Williams was intentionally walked. (Williams had been a hot hitter at the time. In his previous 10 games he’d batted .400/.438/.778 with three home runs.) Ernie Banks struck out to end the inning.
Such were the Cubs of the mid-1960s.
Anyway, the Cubs had a chance in the bottom of the ninth, the game still scoreless. Ron Santo was hit by a pitch and Ed Bailey walked. Glenn Beckert struck out and Jimmy Stewart flied to center. With two out, Jackson walked again — if you’re counting, that’s now nine walks for the Cubs. Bases loaded, two out, game-winning run at third… Don Landrum popped up to send the game to extras.
Jackson continued to pitch. This was common in that era, having a starting pitcher go to extra innings. With one out, Reds shortstop Leo Cardenas homered. Jackson allowed a two-out single, but got out of the 10th trailing just 1-0.
In the bottom of the 10th Doug Clemens walked. That was Maloney’s 10th walk. That’s the most walks in any no-hitter in MLB history. Tying run on base! But Williams flied to left and Banks hit into a game-ending double play. Maloney had his no-hitter and the Reds defeated the Cubs 1-0.
As you surely know, on Sept. 9, 1965 Sandy Koufax threw a perfect game against the Cubs, so they were no-hit twice in a three-week span — and then not for 7,920 more games in a row, the MLB record for such things, until Cole Hamels’ no-hitter against them for the Phillies July 25, 2015. Entering today’s action, since Hamels’ no-no the Cubs have had at least one hit in 1,548 straight games, so they have been no-hit once in their last 9,468 games (of at least nine innings, games shorter than that aren’t counted for streaks like this). And the Cubs have been no-hit just seven times in franchise history. That’s the fewest for any of the “Original 16” teams. (The Yankees are next fewest, with eight.)
And I have a few notes about Maloney’s no-hitter (and others) from BCB’s JohnW53:
The Cubs have been no-hit three times by pitchers who had double-digit strikeouts: Maloney, with 12; Cole Hamels, with 13; and Sandy Koufax, with 14. Those are the last three times the Cubs were no-hit. Koufax did it in a perfect game on Sept. 9, 1965, three weeks after Maloney did it. Hamels did it on July 25, 2015.
…
Maloney is the only starter since 1901 to have double-digit strikeouts and walks against the Cubs. Three had at least 10 strikeouts and walked nine: Bill Hallahan of the Cardinals (11 strikeouts) in 1930; Koufax (15 strikeouts) in 1960; and Ray Sadecki of the Cardinals in 1961 (10 strikeouts). The Cubs won the first of those games, 11-1; lost the second, 4-3 in 14 innings; and the third ended in a 3-3 tie.
…
The Cubs have lost 46 games by 1-0 on a home run, most recently at home against the Blue Jays on Aug. 18 of last year. Twenty-one have been at home and 25 on the road.
Maloney’s no-hitter was one of just four that went into extra innings and the only one of the four at home.
They lost in 12 innings at Boston in 1910, in 13 innings at St. Louis in 1950 and in 10 innings at Pittsburgh on March 31, 2014, in their first game of the season.
Maloney threw 187 pitches in the no-no, an absurd number by today’s standards when many starters throw 100 fewer than that in a game. He was just 25 when he threw the no-hitter; five years later he missed most of the 1970 season with injuries and he was done the next year at age 31. It’s likely that high pitch counts were the cause, as they were for many pitchers in that era.
The no-hitter happened in the first game of a doubleheader (and the reason for that twin bill was that the previous day’s game had been rained out). In the second game, the Cubs trailed 4-0 in the bottom of the eighth when Williams hit a three-run homer off Joey Jay to pull the Cubs to within one. In the bottom of the ninth, Harvey Kuenn singled with one out and Ellis Burton ran for him. One out later, Burton stole second — but that became moot when Don Landrum slugged a two-run walk-off home run, the only walk-off homer of his career, to give the Cubs a 5-4 win.
Now, here’s what you have all been waiting for, the video from this game.
If you have never seen this video, it’s worth watching not just for the baseball from 60 years ago and the no-hitter, but since this was recorded off-air, the original commercials are included. They’re a hoot. The first voice you hear on this video is Lloyd Pettit, who shared announcing duties with Jack Brickhouse back then and was also WGN-TV’s Blackhawks play-by-play man. Also, since this video was recorded in real time, you can count up the time between innings. In each of the inning breaks here, from the last out of an inning to the first pitch of the next, the time is about two minutes. That hasn’t changed in decades.
Attendance for the doubleheader that afternoon, to watch the fourth-place Reds face the eighth-place Cubs, was 11,342. There were just 18 crowds at Wrigley Field that year larger than that, nine of those for doubleheaders, back in the day when “two games for the price of one” was still a thing. It was a very different time.
This is all a fascinating slice of Cubs and baseball history. Jim Maloney’s no-hitter against the Cubs happened 60 years ago today, Thursday, August 19, 1965.
