Baseball's First Perfect Game

Central Massachusetts, of all places, is home to a professional baseball first. On June 12, 1880 the first perfect game thrown in professional baseball was thrown in Worcester, Massachusetts at what is now the quad on the grounds of the Weller Academic Center at Becker College. An historical marker on the site reads:

"ON JUNE 12, 1880, THE FIRST PERFECT GAME IN PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL HISTORY WAS PITCHED ON THIS SITE (THE FORMER WORCESTER AGRICULTURAL FAIRGROUNDS) BY J. LEE RICHMOND OF WORCESTER AGAINST CLEVELAND IN A NATIONAL LEAGUE GAME."

John Lee Richmond of the Worcester "Worcesters" - there appear to be differing accounts as to a nickname by which the team was known, referring to "Ruby Legs," "No Names," and "Brown Stockings" - of the National League was the first perfect pitcher in professional baseball against the Cleveland Blues. Incidentally, he was also the first pitcher to give up a grand slam home run.

Perhaps not unlike another perfect game 118 years later, where the pitcher claimed he was "half drunk" or "hung over," according to Donald Dewey, Richmond had partied all night at a pre-graduation party and played a morning game between Brown and Yale before making his way to Worcester for the Cleveland game.

Richmond was a lefty who began his six season career with the Boston Red Caps - the team that has come to be the Atlanta Braves - in 1879 at the age of 22. He was a 5'10", 142 lbs. curveball specialist. In 1880 he was finishing his bachelors' degree en route to a medical career; while he was a major league pitcher he was also a student at Brown and later a medical student at what would become NYU, using his earnings to finance his education toward becoming a doctor. He was signed to play with Worcester for $2400, an amazing sum of money in the day. Interestingly enough, he is also responsible for Major League Baseball rules prohibiting professionals from playing with amateurs, as he played concurrently as a pro and an amateur (he played college ball while pitching in pro ball).

In the course of his six baseball seasons, he amassed a 75-100 win/loss record over the course of 191 games, of which he started 179. By the end of his career, he had pitched almost 1600 innings with 8 shutouts, and 161 complete games. In the 1880 season, he threw 590 2/3 innings going 32-32 with 243 strikeouts and 3 saves.

The Blue's losing pitcher, Jim McCormick, was no slouch either, pitching 8 innings in that perfect game and going 45-28 in 1880. Over the course of a 10 year career, he threw over 4,200 innings, striking out 1704.

The Worcesters played a total of three years, 1880-1882 and were eventually dechartered as a major league team at the end of the 1882 season due to poor attendance, drawing less than 100 fans on several occasions that final year. The National League replaced them with the team that would become the Philadelphia Phillies. When the Worcesters folded up, he spent the next year, 1883, playing for the Providence Grays while he attended medical school. He played a total of 12 games in 1883, going 3-7. For the three years of the Worcester teams' existence, he accounted for 80% of the team's wins.

Given the number of innings he had pitched over the course of his career, his arm became chronically fatigued, and his 1886 comeback with the Cincinnati Red Stockings lasted a total of three games - although in those three games he had a complete game loss. He finished his major league career October 4, 1886 and took up his medical career from there.

The perfect game itself lasted all of an hour, twenty six minutes, with the only run scored in the fifth inning on an errant throw home by the Cleveland second baseman - the ball "sailed" over the catcher's head. Worcester won 1-0.

This feat was matched five days later by hall of famer, 20-year old John Montgomery Ward against the Buffalo Bisons and would not be repeated in the National League for over 80 years.

Making the achievement more remarkable were the rules in effect at the time. In the 1880's, pitches were thrown underhand because the hand could not rise above the pitcher's belt. There was a pitchers' box, without a mound, and it took 8 balls to draw a walk.

Richmond retired from baseball at age 26 to pursue his medical career, and later he became an educator, eventually becoming a Principal in the Toledo Public Schools. Following that, he left the public schools to become dean of men at the University of Toledo.

REFERENCES:

Baseball Reference, 1880 Worcester Ruby Legs
URL: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams
/WOR/1880.shtml

Project Ball Park, Driving Park at Agricultural County Fair Grounds,
URL: http://www.projectballpark.org/history/nl/agricultural.html

Galanis Sports Data,
URL: http://www.galanissportsdata.com/
person.asp?personID=725

Baseball Reference, J Lee Richmond,
URL: http://www.baseball-reference.com
/r/richmle01.shtml

Baseball Almanac, Perfect Game Box Score,
URL: http://www.baseball-almanac.com
/boxscore/06121880.shtml

Donald Dewey in The Biographical History of Baseball (1995), quoted

In Baseball Almanac, J Lee Richmond,
URL: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/
players/player.php?p=richmle01

Baseball Almanac, Jim McCormick,
URL: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=mccorji01

Baseball Library, David Wells' perfect game,
URL: http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/
submit/Frommer_Harvey48.stm

Brown University, Remembering Brown Sports,
URL: http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/University_
Library/exhibits/sports/early_printable.html

Husman, John R in Porter, David, The Biographical Dictionary of American Sports, (1995) GreenwoodPress

WIkipedia "Perfect Game," URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_game#19th_century

Becker College History: URL: http://www.becker.edu/pages/398.asp