Young Babe Ruth Outlasts Walter Johnson in a 13-Inning Pitching Duel

On August 15, 1916, Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox and Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators locked into one of the greatest pitching duels in baseball history, a 13-inning contest at Fenway Park that Ruth won 1-0. Both men threw complete games. Neither blinked for twelve scoreless innings before Ruth's team finally pushed across the only run in the bottom of the thirteenth.

Ruth was 21 years old, a left-hander in his third full season with Boston and already one of the best pitchers in the American League. Johnson was 28, the most dominant pitcher of his generation, a right-hander whose fastball had earned him the nickname "The Big Train." Both men had beaten each other before, but never in a game this long or this tightly contested.

Johnson was brilliant. He scattered five hits across twelve and two-thirds innings, walking two and striking out four. On most afternoons, that performance would have been more than enough. Ruth matched him pitch for pitch, allowing just a single infield hit by Clyde Milan after the seventh inning. The Senators managed to put runners on base early but could not push any of them home.

The game turned in the bottom of the thirteenth. Ruth's teammates finally scraped together enough offense to break through against the tiring Johnson. The winning run ended a game that had consumed more than three hours, a marathon by the standards of dead-ball era baseball, when most games finished in less than two.

Ruth went 23-12 with a 1.75 ERA that season, second in the American League to Johnson's own sparkling numbers. The Red Sox won the 1916 World Series, with Ruth pitching 13.2 scoreless innings in Game 2 against the Brooklyn Robins. Within a few years, Ruth's identity would shift permanently from pitcher to slugger, and his mound dominance would become a footnote to his hitting exploits. But on August 15, 1916, he was still a pitcher first, and he beat the best there was.