Eight Runs Down at Shibe Park: The A’s Rally That Changed the Series

The most famous hit of the Philadelphia Athletics’ 1929 World Series did not put them ahead.

Mule Haas’s fly to center became an inside-the-park home run, brought two teammates around with him and transformed an 8–4 deficit into an 8–7 game. It was the play that gave an extraordinary inning its enduring image. But the A’s still needed another run to draw even, and another two to win. They needed Lefty Grove to protect the lead. And, after a Sunday without a game, they needed an entirely different comeback to become champions.

That is what makes the seventh inning at Shibe Park on October 12 more interesting than a tale of one swing changing everything. The Athletics scored ten runs in the inning and beat the Chicago Cubs, 10–8, in Game 4. They seized a three-games-to-one Series lead when Chicago had been moving toward a tie. Yet the championship remained unclaimed until Monday, when Philadelphia trailed again late and had to find another way through.

The two rallies belong together. The first made the Series Philadelphia’s to finish. The second showed what finishing required.

Chicago and Philadelphia had arrived as formidable pennant winners: the Cubs were 98–54, the A’s 104–46. After losing Game 3, the Athletics faced a consequential Saturday at home. A Cubs victory in Game 4 would make the Series even. By the middle of the seventh, Chicago had done far more than stay close. It led 8–0.

That score is essential to the story, but so is what happened before Haas came to bat. A rally large enough to erase eight runs cannot live on one play. It needs runners, repeated contact and an opponent unable to secure the outs that would stop the inning. The A’s would produce ten hits in the seventh. Fifteen Philadelphia batters would come to the plate. Four Chicago pitchers would work during the inning, each entering a game that kept slipping further from the Cubs.

Al Simmons began with a home run off Charlie Root. At 8–1, it was a start, not yet a threat to Chicago’s lead. Jimmie Foxx followed with a single. Bing Miller hit a fly to center that was scored a single; accounts of the game describe center fielder Hack Wilson contending with the sun on that play. Jimmy Dykes and Joe Boley then drove in runs with singles of their own.

Five consecutive hits had turned an eight-run shutout into an 8–3 game. Root finally got an out when George Burns, batting for pitcher Eddie Rommel, popped up. Max Bishop followed with a single that scored Dykes. The Cubs went to left-hander Art Nehf. Philadelphia still trailed by four, and the inning was no longer a matter of Root simply having a bad stretch. Chicago had changed pitchers, but it had not stopped the A’s from reaching base.

Boley stood at third and Bishop at first when Haas sent his fly toward center. The ball became an inside-the-park home run, scoring both runners ahead of him. Historical accounts attribute Wilson’s difficulty on the play to the sun, as they do on Miller’s earlier fly. The event record establishes what the hit became: a three-run homer that left the Cubs ahead by only one.

It is possible to understand why that play has come to stand for the whole comeback. An inside-the-park home run is memorable under ordinary circumstances. This one arrived in a World Series, with the A’s pursuing a lead that had seemed safely out of reach only minutes earlier. But making Haas’s hit the ending would remove the work Philadelphia still had to do.

Nehf walked Mickey Cochrane. Sheriff Blake replaced him and surrendered a single to Simmons. Foxx then singled home Cochrane, tying the score at eight. Chicago manager Joe McCarthy called on Pat Malone, who hit Miller with a pitch to load the bases. Dykes doubled, bringing home Simmons and Foxx. Only then did the A’s lead, 10–8.

Dykes’s hit supplied the winning margin. His contribution did not begin there: he had singled in a run earlier in the inning and finished Game 4 with three hits and three RBIs. Boley, Bishop and Miller had also helped build the opportunities that made the bigger swings matter. Simmons had opened the door with his homer and later reached base again as the order came around. Foxx supplied the tying hit. In an inning remembered for one ball to center field, the A’s kept finding another hitter to extend it.

Malone struck out Boley and Burns to end the seventh. The Athletics had their lead, but two innings remained. Grove pitched them without allowing a run, completing the 10–8 win. Philadelphia had turned a likely two-games-all Series into a three-games-to-one advantage.

That is a change in the Series that the score can prove. A broader claim—that the inning broke Chicago’s confidence or made the championship inevitable—is harder to sustain. The Cubs still had a game to play, and on Monday they came close to taking it.

There was no Game 5 on Sunday, October 13. Philadelphia’s Sunday restrictions accounted for the off-day, placing the clincher on Monday, October 14. The pause matters to the shape of the story. Game 5 was not the next afternoon’s continuation of a rally that would not stop. It was a new game, with a new lead for Chicago and a new set of problems for the Athletics.

Malone, the last Cubs pitcher used in the ten-run inning, started Game 5. This time he carried a 2–0 lead and a two-hit shutout into the ninth. The Cubs had held Philadelphia scoreless for eight innings. For all the force of Saturday’s comeback, the A’s were three outs from returning to Chicago for another game.

The ninth began with pinch-hitter Walt French striking out. Bishop followed with a single. Haas, whose inside-the-park homer had brought the A’s within one run in Game 4, hit a two-run homer to tie Game 5. The similarity is striking, but the situation was different. Saturday’s homer had been one step in a long seventh-inning procession. Monday’s erased the entire deficit at once.

It still did not win the game. Cochrane grounded out. Simmons doubled, Foxx was intentionally walked, and Miller doubled home Simmons. Philadelphia won 3–2, taking the World Series four games to one.

Miller’s final hit gives the Series its necessary second ending. He had appeared in Saturday’s pivotal inning, when his fly was scored a single and he later took a pitch to load the bases before Dykes’s double. On Monday, he delivered the hit that made the title official. Haas was indispensable to both comebacks, but neither finished with his swing.

The distinction does not diminish Game 4. An eight-run deficit in a World Series game is daunting; a ten-run inning against a club fighting to level the Series is extraordinary. Chicago’s 8–0 lead had been large enough to make the middle innings look decisive. Instead, the A’s forced Root out, kept reaching against his replacements and made Haas’s remarkable trip around the bases part of something larger. When Grove finished the game, Philadelphia had earned the chance to clinch at Shibe Park.

What the inning could not provide was the clinch itself. Monday required Bishop to reach base, Haas to tie the score, Simmons to get into scoring position and Miller to bring him home. It required the Athletics to respond after Malone had quieted their lineup far longer than Chicago’s pitchers had on Saturday. The Cubs had not disappeared from the Series just because they had endured its most spectacular inning.

Sports history often compresses a championship into its most vivid play. For the 1929 A’s, that image is Haas circling the bases while Philadelphia closes in on a lead it had trailed by eight runs. The image deserves its place. So does Dykes’s double after the score was tied, Grove’s scoreless finish, and the ninth inning two days later that finally decided the title.

The rally at Shibe Park changed the Series because it changed who held the advantage. Its full meaning came only when the Athletics had to win from behind once more.