The New York Giants in 1916 were an extremely streaky team. They offset a 2-13 start with 17 consecutive wins on the road, then later set a major league record with 26 straight wins during a 31-game homestand at the Polo Grounds.
The record includes a quirk: a 1-1 tie against the Pittsburgh Pirates in a game that was rained out after nine innings. The teams made up that game as part of a doubleheader the next day, and New York went on to set its 101-year-old record. The Giants ultimately finished fourth in the National League.
The Cleveland Indians have 21 wins in a row after beating the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday.
Here are two reports by The Associated Press from when the Giants passed the 1906 Chicago White Sox and 1884 Providence Grays with two wins in a Sept. 25, 1916, doubleheader against St. Louis. They are presented as they appeared in newspapers at the time.
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In this 1910 file photo, New York Giants star pitcher Christy Mathewson, who won 373 games during his career which spanned 17 years, from 1900 to 1916. poses with a baseball. The New York Giants in 1916 were an extremely streaky team. They offset a 2-13 start with 17 consecutive wins on the road, then later set a major league record with 26 straight wins during a 31-game homestand at the Polo Grounds. (File/Associated Press) By winning another double header from St. Louis 1-0 and 6-2 the New York Giants won their twenty-first straight victory and created a new record for successive victories, smashing the record of the Providence Nationals who won 20 straight games in 1884. Schupp and Perritt, who have both pitched great ball during the great run of victories twirled in fine fashion and had the St. Louis batters at their mercy.
Schupp, McGraw’s young lefthander, tied the Providence record by shutting out St. Louis in the first game. During the winning streak Schupp has pitched two two-hit games, two three-hit games and one six-hit game, three of them being shutouts.
In the second game Perritt, a former St. Louis pitcher, pitched the Giants to a new record over his former teammates and struck out nine men. The Giants used all of their six hits in scoring.
St. Louis …… 000 000 000_0 2 3
New York ….. 000 100 00x_1 3 0
Meadows and Gonzales; Schupp and Rariden.
St. Louis …… 000 002 000_2 6 1
New York ….. 013 100 10x_6 6 2
Lotz and Gonzales, Brottem; Perritt and Rariden.
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The New York National’s double victory over the St. Louis club yesterday enabled the Giants to lay claim to a new major league record for consecutive games won in one season. At the completion of the double-header the team had won twenty-one games without having been defeated, thus passing the record of the famous Providence Grays, that won twenty games in a row in 1884.
During the thirty-two years since Providence set the twenty-game record, the figures have been threatened several times by big league clubs, but never equaled or surpassed until today. In 1906 the Chicago American League club won nineteen in a stretch. The New York Giants ran eighteen straight in 1904 and seventeen games earlier in the present season.
Several minor league clubs have exceeded these figures, the best records being twenty-seven games by th Corsicana club of th Texas League in 1902; twenty-five games by the Charlotte club of the Carolina League in the same year, and twenty-four games by the Jersey City club of the Eastern League in 1903.
In winning twenty-one games straight, the Giants actually figured in twenty-two games, because one of the contests ended in a tie and was eliminated from consideration in computing the winning streak. In one respect, however, the record does not compare with that of the Providence club, as Pitcher Charley Radbourne twirled the Grays to victory in eighteen out of the twenty games won by his club in the 1884 stretch of conquests.
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