You typically need some amount of help to win any baseball game. Even a fairly straightforward 5-1 win that was never really close probably needs a couple bad pitches or some mishit balls to seal the deal. However, everyone appearing in an MLB game is still in the top 0.01 percent of people to play the sport, so usually there’s some amount of limit to how badly an entire team can mess up.
In one 1932 game, there really wasn’t a limit, and that allowed the Yankees to come away with a victory.
On September
12, 1932, the Yankees were in Cleveland. With 98 wins and a 12-game lead in the American League, the defending champions were closing in on the clinch, but still need a few more wins to seal the deal.
After the Yankees went down in the top of the first, Red Ruffing took the mound in the bottom half of the inning. A Joe Sewell error on a foul ball allowed Cleveland leadoff hitter Johnny Burnett to keep his at-bat alive, and eventually single. Earl Averill also singled a couple batters later, before Ruffing got a double play to end the frame. That would be the beginning of a familiar story on the day.
The Yankees’ offense got on the board themselves in the second, as Cleveland’s Bill Cissell committed an error on a Bill Dickey grounder, allowing Ben Chapman to come around and score. Ruffing then needed another double play to escape the second, having put two more runners on.
Ruffing then thew a 1-2-3 third inning, but then did allow Cleveland to get on the board in the fourth. Averill led off the frame with a double, but Ruffing then retired the next two batters to get on the verge of escaping. This time, he couldn’t totally escape, as back-to-back singles from Ed Morgan and Willie Kamm tied and then took the lead for Cleveland.
A Chapman sacrifice fly tied the game back up in the sixth, and Lou Gehrig hit an RBI double in the eighth to put the Yankees back in front. However other than the third, Ruffing still hadn’t put up a clean inning, and eventually Cleveland broke through again. In the bottom of the eighth, Joe Vosmik hit a leadoff triple and then scored on a Kamm groundout.
The bottom of the ninth inning saw Cleveland get the winning run 90 feet away, but fail to capitalize and walk it off. It was a similar story in the 10th, but the worst of all for them came in the 11th. With Ruffing still plowing through, he allowed two singles to start the frame and put runners at the corners. After defensive indifference moved a second Cleveland runner into scoring position, Ruffing and the Yankees decided to intentionally walk the bases loaded to set up the double play. That move immediately worked as Vosmik hit into a DP, with outs coming at home and first. They still had the winning run at third, though, but after a Morgan walk, Kamm flew out to end the threat.
As it turns out, it you don’t take your chances and let a team like the eventual 107-win and World Series winning 1932 Yankees team hang around, they’ll make you pay. While Cleveland’s Oral Hildebrand retired the first two batters of the 12th, the next three reached, including an intentional walk to Gehrig to similarly try and set up a double play. However, Chapman did not ground into one, and still tripled to right field. All three runners scored, and Dickey followed that with a home run, giving the Yankees a five-run edge.
Naturally after all that, Ruffing — who Joe McCarthy still kept going with, because 1932 — then came up with just his second 1-2-3 inning of the day. Cleveland went down in order in the final frame, as the Yankees came away with an 8-3 win.
In total, Cleveland recorded 14 hits and eight walks on September 12, 1932. That should be plenty enough to not only win, but win comfortably. However, if you follow that up by going 1-for-17 with runners in scoring position, you might end scoring only three runs and losing. Oops.
