by Scott Fennessy
Chicago, IL 6/8/1905
North Side Park
The Cubs continue their home stand against the Braves today. Chick Fraser against the red hot Ed Reulbach. The Braves are currently in 6th place but just percentage points behind the surging Reds, but the Cardinals with some roster changes are starting to show signs of life, and are just percentage points behind Boston.
The Braves go down quickly in the first, and the Cubs make this a blowout from the start. Billy Maloney hits a rocket at former Cub Fred Raymer and he boots it and we have the aggressive leadoff man on base, and Evers at bat. Chance sends him on the hit and run as it has been exceptionally successful with these two all year. So Maloney is off and Evers hits another rocket right at Sharpe who snares it and doubles Maloney off. Art Hofman draws a walk and the Cubs follow with 5 straight singles and the inning ends 0-4 Cubs.
In the second the Cubs get another run on a Maloney single and stolen base and an RBI single by Hofman as the Cubs bump the lead to 0-5. Score was the same until yet another single festival starts in the 5th when Fraser finally got knocked out of the game. Inning ends 0-6 Cubs. While Reulbach is throwing yet another gem, but the Braves bullpen is not doing a whole lot better than Fraser was. Volz is getting hammered hard and has not been much better in his previous work this season. He gives up 3 runs in 3 innings on 6 hits. Former Reds outfielder Dick Harley finished the ninth with no runs but gave up two hits and a walk and Johnny Kling hits into an inning ending DP to keep the inning scoreless. Reulbach finishes his complete game with a 1-2-3 ninth and the Cubs win 2-9.
For the Braves the bats continued to struggle. Harry Wolverton who had avoided the DL so far this year (double digit trips in my 01 replay) and the Braves bench is not very good so this is a real bad break. Defensively they committed their 57th error of the year, but did turn two DP’s.
For the Cubs, Reulbach allows just 2 runs on 5 hits. Maloney had 3 more hits and 2 steals he is now hitting .320 with 23 steals. Frank Chance had two more hits and steals his average is up to .283 with 15 steals and drew his 20th walk of the year. Joe Tinker is officially hot now and is riding a 5 game hit streak with 4 hits today is now up to .236. Johnny Kling also at 5 game hit streak with two more hits is now at .209 which is about 30 points above where it has been this year. His stolen base in the 7th was his 11th. Doc Casey who has probably performed the worst had two hits, including his 7th double and he is now threatening to crack .200. On the down side Art Hofman who had two hits but has really struggled lately. He is down to .229, which seems odd as he is constantly in the middle of rallies. He seems to be getting a lot of ofer’s and when he does get a hit is a 1-6 type of day. 6 more team steals and they are now at an amazing 113 for the year with only 15 times caught.
