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ST. JOHN’S SETS NEW RECORD: 18 STRAIGHT WINS
PERENNIAL NEW ENGLAND FAVES 23-4 AFTER 5-4 START; SCORING 3.5 R/G MORE THAN OPPONENTS

PROVIDENCE, R.I. & NEW HAVEN, CONN. (June 8, 1866) – After they set a new standard for short-term dominance by starting the 1865 season 17-0, many figured that Knickerbocker’s seventeen-game winning streak would stand for years, if not decades. As it turns out, the record lasted slightly less than thirteen months. The team to take the record to eighteen? Of course, it was St. John’s Baseball Club of Providence, Rhode Island.

St. John’s did have to work hard to break the record, however. Their last two wins have both needed extra innings, with this afternoon’s record-breaking 7-6 victory at Quinnipiac in New Haven, Connecticut going to ten, in which a pair of St. John’s runs in the top of the 10th were answered by a Quinnipiac run in the bottom half before the tying run was stranded on third base. As they frequently do, Konrad Jensen & Nelson Townsend led the way with 2/5 days with the bat, and both players scored runs and stole bases.

St. John’s started the season with middling results: five wins and four losses over their first nine games. Then, to end Week Two they scored a 15-14 walk-off victory over Portland that started what has since become an epic winning run that has continued on through to the end of the first full week of June.

St. Johns’ results during their eighteen-game streak:

• May 13: PORT 14-15 STJ – RF Konrad Jensen 4/5, 2B, 4 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 5 SB, 1 OF AST
• May 16: STJ 16-11 OCE – RF Konrad Jensen 3/6, 2 2B, 4 R, 1 RBI, 4 SB
• May 17: STJ 7-2 OCE – P Harold Perry CG, 7 H, 2 R/ER, 0 BB, 2 K
• May 18: STJ 8-4 OCE – LF Nelson Townsend 2/4, 2B, 2 R, 2 RBI, 1 SB, 1 BB
• May 19: STJ 16-4 OCE – CF William Johnson 4/6, 2 2B, 3 R, 4 RBI
• May 20: STJ x-x OCE – game rained out, rescheduled for July 4th
• May 23: GRA 2-5 STJ – P William Tighe CG 7 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K
• May 24: GRA 3-9 STJ – C Dag Nielsen 3/5, 2 R, 2 RBI
• May 25: GRA 2-13 STJ – RF Konrad Jensen 3/4, 2B, 3 R, 2 RBI, 1 BB, 1 SB
• May 26: GRA 4-5 STJ – 3B Leopold Pfeiffer 2/5, 2B, 1 R, 1 RBI, GW HIT IN 9TH
• May 27: GRA 3-14 STJ – LF Nelson Townsend 3/5, 3 R, 3 RBI, 1 SB
• May 30: CAN 5-12 STJ – RF Konrad Jensen 4/5, 4 2B, 3 R, 4 RBI, 1 SB
• May 31: CAN 6-10 STJ – RF Konrad Jensen 3/4, HR, 2 R, 2 RBI, 1 BB, 2 SB
• June 1: CAN 4-12 STJ – SS Everton Butters 4/5, 2B, 2 R, 1 RBI, 2 SB
• June 2: CAN 9-10 STJ – CF William Johnson 3/5, 3 2B, 2 R, 2 RBI, 1 OF AST
• June 3: CAN 8-9 STJ – CF William Johnson 4/5, 2B, 3 R, 2 SB
• June 6: STJ 2-1 QUI – P William Tighe CG, 3 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K
• June 7: STJ 9-7 QUI (11 Inn.) – RF Konrad Jensen 4/5, 2B, 3B, 2 R, 5 RBI, 1 SB
• June 8: STJ 7-6 QUI (10 Inn.) – 2B Thomas DiMola 2/5, 2 R, 2 RBI, GW HIT IN 10TH

During the streak, St. Johns’ dominance has been staggering. Over the eighteen games they have scored 179 runs (9.9 R/G) while allowing 95 (5.3 R/G). That makes for a Run Differential of +84, and that means St. John’s has been outscoring their opponents by 4.6 runs per game during their historic run of form.

St. John’s is now 23-4 after five and a half weeks of play, and their current Run Differential of +96 has them on a pace to equal, or even slightly better, the 1859 St. John’s team that set the N.B.B.O. Run Differential of +245 (+3.5 R/G).

Everybody – fans, players, coaches, executives, and the Writers Pool – knew that St. John’s would regroup after their disastrous second half of the 1865 season, but nobody imagined them playing like this. St. John’s is back, and how!