15 July in Sports History

The events on July 15 in team sports seem to center around some very memorable no-hit performances by some very good pitchers in baseball history.

Sports history is made every day of the year. We will preserve at least a small sampling from some great athletes every day based on the uniform number they wore.

5 - 23 - 30

July 15, 1876 - By George I think he's got it!  Almost 100 years to the day after a guy named George Washington was preserving freedom with patriotic forces while the Declaration of Independence was being signed by the Continental Congress, the game of baseball had its first official no-hitter declared when George Bradley of the St Louis Brown Stockings no-hits the Hartford Dark Blues team, in a 2-0 blanking. Just to keep the George's in order, When Bradley performed this eventful feat it was less than three weeks prior that George Armstrong Custer perished at Little Big Horn. That story may have enough Georges in it to make the Foreman family reunion!

July 15, 1901 - New York Giants ace pitcher Christy Mathewson threw a beauty of a game as he no-hit the St Louis Cardinals, 5-0 at old Robison Field. That happened to be Mathewson’s first of two no-hitters during his career.

July 15, 1909 - Detroit Tiger's future Baseball Hall of Fame center-fielder Ty Cobb crushed not one but two inside-the-park homer runs to lead the Tigers to a sweep of the Washington Senators, 9-5 and 7-0

July 15, 1912 - Possibly America's top all-time all-around athlete, Jim Thorpe placed in the top four of all 10 events of the Decathalon, for an Olympic record 8,413 points to win the Decathlon gold medal at the Stockholm Olympics. Of course this medal along with the other he had won were stripped from him in 1913 for allegedly playing pro baseball back in 1910 ruining his amateur status needed to compete as an Olympian in that era. The medals were eventually reinstated to Thorpe, posthumously in 1982.

July 15, 1960 - Baltimore Orioles's future Baseball Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, Number 5 went an amazingly perfect 5 for 5 at the plate including hitting for the cycle in the Orioles' 5-2 win over the Chicago White Sox

July 15, 1969 - Cincinnati Reds slugger Lee May who wore Number 23, hit 4 Home Runs with a total daily haul of 10 RBIs in a doubleheader in Atlanta against the Braves. The Reds and Brave split the games that day with Atlanta winning the first game 9-8 and Cincy taking game 2 by the score of 10-4.

16 Jul 1969, Wed The Daily Times (Salisbury, Maryland) Newspapers.com

July 15, 1973 - Nolan Ryan, California Angels Number 30 threw the second of his seven career no-hitters which is a major-league record. Ryan no-hit the Detroit Tigers for a 6-0 victory at Tiger Stadium.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com.

Banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of the 1905 Reproduction of a painting by Fletcher C. Ransom entitled "Out at Home." Christy Mathewson is the pitcher, Roger Bresnahan is the catcher. Bresnahan is tagging out the Philadelphia Athletics runner while Manager John McGraw, far right, looks on.