Welcome to another venture into the past, as we look at events both significant and insignificant that meet a specific criterion for inclusion, i.e., your correspondent has to feel like writing about them. You’ve got your taxes filed on time (at least we hope so), so sit back, relax, and join us on this journey.
“You Don’t See Many of Those”
April 12, 1978: Texas Rangers players returned to their clubhouse after a pregame workout to a scary sight. Pitcher Roger Moret stood frozen in front of his locker, clad in nothing but his underwear, holding a shower slipper in his extended right hand. The left-hander had threatened to leave the team the previous week but was persuaded to stay. On this night, once again, he told manager Billy Hunter he was leaving the team. Moret got as far as his locker and froze. The players summoned Hunter to the scene, but according to author Mike Shropshire, all Hunter did was stare at Moret and declare, “What I need is a good left-handed starter, not some damn statue.”
It took a psychiatrist two hours, during which Moret was given five injections of a sedative, to talk him into an ambulance. Moret was whisked away to Arlington Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, accompanied by team personnel with bigger supplies of empathy than Hunter, including team president Brad Corbett. When he returned, Corbett told United Press International, “He is a very sick man. This doesn’t have anything to do with drugs or anything like that. He’s just sick.” Said team physician B.J. Mysockie, “He was definitely in a catatonic state. You don’t see many of those.” Moret returned to the team in late May and quit the Rangers for good in June. He resurfaced in the Mexican League in 1982, pitching in 22 games before retiring.
A First Time for Everything
April 13, 1969: For the first time in his Pittsburgh Pirates career that began in 1955, star right fielder Roberto Clemente was booed by the hometown fans at Forbes Field. The previous day, he hit into a bases-loaded double play in an 8-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies. On this day, he hit into two more double plays and committed an error in the top of the eighth inning when he bobbled Deron Johnson’s single. Although the error didn’t hurt, the booing reached a climax when Clemente strode to the plate to lead off the bottom of the eighth with the Phillies ahead, 5-3. Clemente stopped and waved his helmet at the crowd in a dramatic circular motion. Some of the fans applauded. Clemente drew a walk, and Willie Stargell followed with a home run to tie the game. Pittsburgh went on to win, 6-5.
Clemente, who considered retiring from baseball the previous February, told Bill Christine of The Pittsburgh Press, “If a player doesn’t try hard, he deserves to be booed. I try hard. Maybe I was booed today because I have not played that bad before.”
Debuts: The Good and the Ugly
April 14, 2002: Making his major league debut for the Seattle Mariners, designated hitter Ron Wright hit for a different kind of cycle against the Rangers at The Ballpark in Arlington. Specifically, Wright made outs for the cycle: He struck out, hit into a double play, and hit into a triple play. The triple play happened in the fourth inning when Ruben Sierra led off with a double off pitcher Kenny Rogers and advanced to third base on John Olerud’s single. Wright followed with a groundball right at Rogers. Rogers spun and fired the ball to shortstop Alex Rodriguez for a force-out on Olerud. Trying to score on the play, Sierra was caught in a rundown and was tagged out, after which Wright was out trying to advance to second.
“It sounds like Ruben maybe was not running too hard,” Wright explained to Larry Stone of The Seattle Times in 2017. “I looked up and saw him in a pickle. The first base coach waved me to second so I could at least get in scoring position.” Wright hit into a double play in the sixth inning with two men on base. When his turn came up again the next inning, Mariners manager Lou Piniella sent up a pinch-hitter. The Mariners won the game, 9-7. Wright never played in the majors again.
April 15, 1947: At Ebbets Field, Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman Jackie Robinson made his major league debut, breaking baseball’s long-held color barrier. When he made the club in the spring, a group of Southern white players circulated a petition stating that they didn’t want to play with Blacks. Manager Leo Durocher suggested they stick the petition in a part of the body that’s normally not used as a receptacle.
Jackie Robinson blazed a trail that changed our game and our country. Here is his story. #Jackie42 pic.twitter.com/THjkEPL1dt
— MLB (@MLB) April 15, 2025
Robinson went hitless for the day but played a key role in Brooklyn’s 5-3 victory over the Boston Braves. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Eddie Stanky led off with a walk. Robinson then laid down a sacrifice bunt and was safe at first on first baseman Earl Torgeson’s wild throw. Pete Reiser then laced a double down the right field line. Stanky scored easily, and Robinson dashed all the way home with the winning run. Newspaper reports in 1947 weren’t always kind to Black players, but Associated Press credited Robinson with “playing perfect ball at first base.” Durocher had been suspended before the season began for consorting with unsavory types. Interim manager Clyde Sukeforth thus had the distinction of being Robinson’s first major league manager.
April 17, 1945: Before Robinson’s debut, Major League Baseball had long insisted that it had no color barrier; it was just that the white players were better. However, that argument didn’t seem to hold much water when, in the previous December, the St. Louis Browns signed one-armed outfielder Pete Gray rather than a two-armed player of color. When Gray debuted in the defending American League champion’s home opener against the Detroit Tigers, playing left field and batting second, United Press called him “the most closely watched rookie of the day.” Gray had one hit in four trips to the plate. He was robbed of a likely double when Detroit center fielder Doc Cramer ranged far to his right and snagged Gray’s long line drive right before it hit the ground. The Browns won the contest, 7-1. In 1944, Gray hit .333 with Memphis of the Southern Association and was named its Most Valuable Player, but he found the majors more difficult. He hit .218/.259/.261 (47 OPS+) in 1945, which was his lone season in the big time.
Mr. Newsom Goes to Washington (Again)
April 15, 1952: At the age of 44, Bobo Newsom appeared in the Washington Senators’ home opener against the Boston Red Sox, pitching a scoreless ninth inning of Washington’s 3-0 loss. It was the right-hander’s fifth stint with the Senators, who reacquired him as a free agent in 1949 and sent him to the minors, where they hoped he’d regain his previous form after struggling. United Press called Newsom “baseball’s gift to the railroad industry.” Teams passed Newsom back and forth like a hot potato. His 26-year professional baseball career, which began in 1928, included those five stints with Washington, three with the Browns, and two each with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Athletics. The Red Sox also acquired him twice, although the second go-around was spent in their minor league system. He also pitched for the Chicago Cubs, Tigers, New York Yankees, and New York Giants. His travels included 10 minor league cities. He was baseball’s most wanted and unwanted man at the same time. For his major league career, he was 211-222 with a 3.98 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, and 107 ERA+.
An Opening Day No-Hitter
April 16, 1940: At Comiskey Park, Cleveland’s Bob Feller tossed one of the more famous no-hitters in baseball history, beating the Chicago White Sox, 1-0, on Opening Day. With his parents in the stands, the 21-year-old right-hander struck out eight and walked five. The White Sox didn’t come close to getting a hit until there were two out in the ninth inning. Luke Appling battled Feller through a tense 10-pitch plate appearance before drawing a walk. Taffy Wright followed with a smash up the middle. At that point, “I thought it was over,” Feller told Steve Snider of United Press. “That ball would have gone for a hit nine times out of 10. He really laid into it.” But second baseman Ray Mack was stationed in that direction, moved to his left, knocked the ball down at his feet, and quickly retrieved it to throw Wright out on a close play. It was the first, and to this day the only, Opening Day no-hitter in major league history.
Bob Feller throws the only no-hitter on opening day in MLB history, 1940. Photo by Mark Rucker. #OpeningDay pic.twitter.com/pH7QE5AEUj
— Baseball In Pics (@baseballinpix) March 26, 2026
Loose Shoelace Costs Victory
April 17, 1945: There’s an old saying that loose lips sink ships. There was one occasion where a loose shoelace sank the Pirates’ ship. On Opening Day at Crosley Field, the Pirates lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 7-6, in 11 innings, but it didn’t have to get that far. In the fifth inning, the Pirates had Frankie Zak on first base and Al Lopez on second with two outs and Jim Russell at the plate. Zak asked for a time-out to tie a loose shoelace. Second base umpire Ziggy Sears (no relation to Ziggy Stardust) signaled a time-out as Reds pitcher Bucky Walters delivered the pitch. Russell crushed a long drive over the center field fence for an apparent three-run home run. But home plate umpire George Barr ruled that the play didn’t count. After Pirates manager Frankie Frisch put up a futile protest, Russell singled to score Lopez. The next batter, Bob Elliott, popped out to end the inning.
Mantle Blasts One 565 Feet – Maybe
April 17, 1953: During an otherwise unremarkable Yankees 7-3 victory over the Senators, Mickey Mantle hit the longest home run ever hit at Griffith Stadium. Batting right-handed against left-hander Chuck Stobbs in the fourth inning with Yogi Berra on first base, Mantle blasted a high fastball to left-center field, where a stiff breeze was blowing. The ball ascended until it struck a beer sign atop the bleachers and went out of the ballpark. The drive was so high that Mantle was already rounding second base when it left the park. From the press box, Yankees publicist Red Patterson cried, “That one’s got to be measured!” When he returned, he reported that the ball was retrieved by a 10-year-old boy named Donald Dunaway. Patterson claimed that Dunaway showed him the spot in the backyard of 434 Oakdale Place where the ball landed. Patterson knew the distance was 391 feet from home plate to the bleachers. He claimed that he paced off enough one-foot strides to conclude that the ball had traveled 565 feet. (United Press reported that it went 562 feet.)
In 2008, Mantle biographer Janet Leavy tracked down Dunaway, who was living two blocks away from where he retrieved the ball. He was 14 at the time, not 10 as Patterson reported. Dunaway told Leavy that he was at the game and left the park to locate the ball. He found it in a pile of leaves in the back of the house at 434 Oakdale, which Leavy estimated was 25 feet closer to the ballpark than Patterson had stated. Dunaway told her that he never showed anybody where the ball had landed. He returned the ball to the Yankees’ clubhouse. Over the years, accounts of how much he got for the ball have changed.
In subsequent years, scientists who measured the trajectory of the ball said that there was no way the ball traveled 565 feet. The consensus was that a more reasonable estimate was 500-520 feet. SABR historian William J. Jenkinson was among the doubters. He told author Allen Barra that he found Patterson, who died in 1994, in the San Diego area. When Jenkinson pressed him about the distance, Patterson got “defensive.” Patterson admitted to nothing, but finally said, “Hey, come on. It was my job to make Mickey look good.”
In any event, Patterson had made tape-measure home runs a “thing,” in the parlance of today’s younger folks. But Mantle’s blast wasn’t the first to ever leave Griffith Stadium. That distinction belonged to Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays. However, unlike Mantle, Gibson didn’t have a publicist.
The Deal That Couldn’t Be Made
April 17, 1960: It’s an old debate in baseball: Would you rather have a power hitter or a player who hits for a high average? Two executives thought they had the correct answer, albeit different ones, when Cleveland traded 1959 AL home run leader Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for 1959 AL batting champ Harvey Kuenn. Previously, Cleveland general manager Frank Lane, addressing a journalism fraternity in Toledo, said, “We have discussed that trade, Colavito for Kuenn. It cannot be made.”
Colavito, a right fielder, hit .257/.337/.512, 42 HR, and 111 RBI in 1959, while Kuenn, a shortstop who Detroit converted into an outfielder, hit .353/.402/.501, 9 HR, and 71 RBI. Colavito was a popular player in Cleveland, and the trade was largely unpopular there. One fan told Associated Press, “Tie Lane to a boxcar and run him out of Cleveland!” When Lane informed Colavito of the trade, Colavito asked, “For whom?” Told that it was Kuenn, Colavito replied, “Is that all?”
Tigers president Bill DeWitt explained the trade to Associated Press thusly: “I have a high regard for Kuenn as a player, but we felt we needed more power and we are hopeful that this move will help us score more runs.” Lane remarked, “The home run is overrated. Washington almost led the league last year in homers and finished eighth. . . What we’ve done is this – we’ve given up 40 home runs for 40 doubles. We’ve added 50 singles and taken away 50 strikeouts. That sums it up.” Besides, Lane had power-hitting prospect Walt Bond waiting in the wings in the minor leagues. The fact that you’ve never heard of Bond tells you how this deal worked out for Cleveland.
