If you take over when your team is behind but no outs have been recorded and proceed to get all 27 outs, is that a complete game?

My guess would be that the game was suspended due to darkness. And you have to start the game to get credit for a complete game.

For a while, I was accumulating names of pitchers who had a career ERA of infinity, ie: gave up runs while getting no outs. There were a decent amount I found, maybe 10-13. I forget them now. I do remember that the worse individual year that I found was Dennis Tankersley in 2003, who gave up 7 runs, while allowing 3 hits and 4 walks, while getting noone out in one start.

Oh, I found my list:

Frank Dupee 1 3 0 3 0 1 1901 Chicago White Sox Julio Navarro 0 3 2 0 1 1 1966 Detroit Tigers Richard Wortham 0 1 3 1 0 1 1983 Oakland Athletics Marty Walker 1 4 (2) 2 3 0 1 1928 Philadelphia Phillies Wilson Alvarez 1 3 3 2 0 1 1989 Texas Rangers Dave Koslo 1 1 1 0 0 1 1955 Milwaukee Braves Vic Davalillo 0 1 2 2 0 2 1969 St. Louis Cardinals Cy Moore 0 1 (0) 2 0 0 1 1930 Brooklyn Dodgers Billy Sunday 0 2 2 0 0 1 1890 Pittsburgh Pirates Doc Medich 0 2 2 2 0 1 1972 New York Yankees Erik Sabel 0 2 2 0 0 1 2002 Detroit Tigers Brad Pennington 0 1 1 3 0 1 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays Bryan Harvey 0 3 2 1 0 1 1995 Florida Marlins Dennis Tankersley 1 7 3 4 0 1 2003 San Diego Padres
(numbers are losses, runs (earned), hits, walks, hbp, games)
Davalillo is the only one with infinite career that I know of, but I didn't check all career stats just now. Davalillo was also a position player and basically pitched in garbage time I guess. regardless, he did so badly

oops, I mean suspended due to darkness/rain/other

I'm not sure why anyone ought to care about CG anymore, unless that pitchers' name is Roy Halladay. That's not a fair comparison though because Span is a once a century type LHP and Halladay a once a generation type RHP.

Oh yeah, welcome to the 21st century, Baseball.

The bit about pitchers with infinite ERA is interesting though. That is exactly like saying, "That pitcher is so spectacularly bad his performance can not be evaluated." Division by zero is tough, indeterminate or undefined, but whatever.

Back to Spann... I guess other things might've been going on in 1942, or something. Let me hasten to add that the best thing about looking at Spann's career is the sense of marvel/wonder at the beauty of a game that has remained pretty much the same can look so incredibly different depending on how one evaluates LHP.

Look at the game log of his team that year.  Near the end of the year, 2 games ended in ties and the final game was forfeited by the other team and no winning pitcher is listed.

I figured right away it was a tie game that ended due to darkness or rain and thus was a complete game but no decision.

Checking Baseball-Reference's game logs I see nothing for 1942 as it hasn't been dug into yet. So with some research I tried to find his 4 games.
http://www.google.com/archivesearch?q=spahn&scoring=a&sa=N&sugg=d&as_ldate=1942/09&as_hdate=1942/09&lnav=hist8 He appears to have only been in the majors for part of September.

That link leads to 1942 articles involving 'Spahn'. On the 27th of September there is an article which indicates he gave up 10 hits (2 K's) by the 4th inning and it appears was pulled (only have a summary, not full article). Sept 14th Spahn appears to have pitched in relief (2 innings 6 K's if I read the summary right) during a double header split. I cannot find any other games, so 2 covered (both appear to have been losses) and 2 appearances (including the complete game) to go.

Digging more I hit an April article where Spahn was hit hard (April 21st) by the Dodgers. Spahn was very, very wild it appears that year. So his only missing appearance is that complete game. Found a complete game on the 2nd of April but that was spring training.

Anyone else able to find the last appearance of Spahn from 1942 in the majors? Frustrating to find 3 but not the complete game.

Y'know, checking the game log for the team I bet that article from September 27th (for games on the 26th) might be the one. Spahn got his butt handed to him, but if the game was a forfeit then he could've had a complete game despite his poor performance without getting a loss. Shame that the article is a pay-per-view.

http://research.sabr.org/journals/why-and-wherefore-of-forfeit-games

    "Anyone who has supervised a group of children on an outing or school trip can probably sympathize with the park employees who were at the Polo Grounds for the game between the Boston Braves and Giants, September 26, 1942, when kids were admitted to the park free if they brought some scrap metal for the war effort. The youngsters behaved until the bottom of the eighth when, with the Giants leading 5 to 2, some of the boys went onto the field. The rest of them, still in the stands, saw this and, perhaps picturing themselves as big-time ball players, they quickly went over the fences, onto the field where they caused so much confusion that umpire Sears just had to forfeit the game to Boston.

     Warren Spahn pitched this game for the Braves in his rookie season. An oddity of his 1942 record is that, of the four games he pitched in, he had one complete game, this one of September 26, but no wins and no losses."

Forgot to mention...the rule as it presently stands, and presumably stood in 1942, states that in the case of forfeit in favour of the team that is losing the game, no W or L P will be designated.  That's (I looked it up):  10.03(e)(2).