"TRY TO GET THROUGH ONE INNING"
Ernie Shore Got Through- To A Perfect Game!
"It was a hot, dry day in June, 1917, June 23 to be exact, when a tall, raw-boned North Carolinian unsuspectedly was tapped for a niche in baseball's Hall of Fame. It was the day that Babe Ruth, then pitching for the Boston Red Sox, was thumbed to the showers for speaking somewhat bluntly to Umpire Brick Owens, who had just given Ray Morgan of the Washington Senators a base on balls.
Manager Jack Barry looked down the Red Sox bench, spotted six-foot-four Ernie Shore, and motioned him to the pitcher's mound.
'Try to get through this inning,' Barry said, 'and we'll get someone warmed up to take over.'
What followed is one of the more illustrious chapters in diamond history. Morgan, trying to take advantage of the rattled Red Sox, broke for second base on the first pitch and was thrown out by Catcher Sam Agnew, and Shore went on to mow down the next 26 batters for one of baseball's rare perfectly pitched games as Boston won, 4-0.
It's Sheriff Ernie Shore now, picture-book guardian of the law in Forsyth County (Winston-Salem) and the memory of that day in Washington will always be with him.
'Someone said that Ruth took a swing at Owens,' Ernie remembered, 'but that isn't true. He just cussed him out. You know how the Babe was. I'd been with him in Baltimore, and we went up together when Jack Dunn sold us to the Red Sox.'
Shore went in cold, with only eight warm-up throws to the catcher before resuming the game, and retired the Senators so easily after Morgan was thrown out Barry kept him in. He didn't realize he had a no-hitter going until the ninth inning when someone on the bench mentioned it- strictly against baseball superstition- and the Senators tried it steal it away that inning.
'Jack Henry, their catcher, lined one to Duffy Lewis in left field in the ninth,' Ernie recalled, 'and then Clark Griffith ordered Mike Menosky to drag a bunt. Mike was pretty fast, but we got him.'
There was quite a debate whether Shore should be credited with a perfect no-hit, no-run game, since he came into the game as a relief pitcher, but it's in the record book and few people will say he doesn't deserve the honor.
A 200-pound right-hander, Shore- who only goes 220 now- had a fast ball sinker the Senators couldn't fathom that day, but they weren't the only club that had trouble with it. He pitched five one-hit games that season. Against the Athletics Shore went unscathed after Jimmy Walsh, the first batter up, singled. Later on, against the St. Louis Browns, he went seven innings before a pinch hitter spoiled his game.
Shore won a game for the Red Sox in the 1915 World Series, and lost one to Grover Cleveland Alexander of the Phillies. In the 1916 Series he beat Brooklyn twice.
Ruth was a real whiz, Shore said, at his pitching peak, as his World Series records bear out. But the Sheriff thinks Babe was beginning to have a little trouble with his arm when Ed Barrow shifted him to the outfield, where he became one of baseball's all-time greats.
Shore, who has been sheriff 19 years and has three more to go on his present term, would have been a corking good tackle in football, for size at least, but came along 30 years too soon for the pro game. As a matter of fact, nearby Guilford College, where he went to school, had no football team during his time, only a baseball team. It must have been a pretty good one, too, for Shore won 24 games and lost one in two years there, catching Owner Jack Dunn's eye in Baltimore."
-Lewis F. Atchison, Washington Star (Baseball Digest, November 1955)
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