Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s already time for another edition of This Week in Baseball History, with all the baseball stories that are fit to print, or all that fit, whichever comes first.
That’s Amole
April 19, 1900: When Bob Feller threw his no-hitter on April 16, 1940, it was reported (and dutifully recounted in last week’s column) that it was the first Opening Day no-hitter in major league history. Not so fast, said former Detroit Tigers outfielder Harry Bay, who stated that his Tigers were on the wrong end of an Opening Day no-hitter tossed by Doc Amole of Buffalo in the American League opener in 1900. Sure enough, the United Press verified the veracity of Bay’s claim. However, the AL wasn’t considered a major league until 1901. Thus, Feller’s achievement stood.
Keefe Loses, 16-2
April 19, 1914: Jack Keefe, a creation of the great writer Ring Lardner, is a fictional Chicago White Sox pitcher whose story is told via his letters to Al Blanchard, his friend back home in Bedford, Illinois. Originally a series for The Saturday Evening Post, the first six installments were compiled into the novel You Know Me, Al in 1916, arguably the greatest and funniest piece of baseball fiction ever written. Keefe is stubborn, vain, cheap, not as good or as smart as he thinks he is, and unaware of when he’s being ridiculed or taken advantage of, yet he’s strangely likeable. The other ballplayers in the story are actual major leaguers, but the events, of course, are fictional.
On this date in the book, Keefe was losing, 16-2, to the Tigers when White Sox manager Jimmy Callahan finally took him out of the game in the eighth inning. Keefe blamed his performance on Callahan for leaving him in with a sore arm, catcher Ray Schalk for calling a bad game and allowing 10 stolen bases (including four by Ty Cobb), bad defense, “the roughest ground I ever seen,” bad luck, and the wind. When Keefe asks Callahan, “Why don’t you get a catcher?” Callahan says, “We don’t need no catcher when you’re pitching because you can’t get nothing past their bats.” Callahan also had his own reason for not warming up a relief pitcher after a disastrous first inning: “He says Cobb is going to lead the league in batting and baserunning anyway so we might as well give him a head start.”
Veeck Entertains Notre Dame
April 19, 1978: The Observer, Notre Dame’s student newspaper, reported the following lines from a talk White Sox owner Bill Veeck gave to a group of students at Washington Hall on the South Bend campus:
- George Steinbrenner is “the only guy I’ve met who Dale Carnegie would punch right in the mouth.”
- “Richie Zisk gave the White Sox four and a half glorious months. Unfortunately, the season lasts six months.”
- Bobby Bonds “has been doing something lately that we didn’t see all last year; he catches the ball in right field.”
- Reflecting on his time as owner of the St. Louis Browns, he recalled asking a ticket buyer whether he wanted seats on second base, since the Browns “weren’t using that year anyway. He asked me what time the game started. I said, ‘Anytime it’s convenient for you.’”
Ground Ball to. . . the Baserunner?
April 21, 1957: The scene was County Stadium, and the combatants were the Cincinnati Redlegs and the Milwaukee Braves. (The Cincinnati Reds officially changed their name to the Redlegs in 1953, when anything “red” carried a negative connotation during the McCarthyism era, lest all Reds’ personnel be hauled in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and be made to testify alongside those evil Hollywood stars and folk singers. The name was changed back to the Reds after the 1959 season, when the country came back to its senses, however temporary.)
With one out in the top of the first inning, Cincinnati’s Don Hoak beat out a bunt to pitcher Warren Spahn for a single. The next batter, Gus Bell, singled to advance Hoak to second base. Wally Post followed by rapping a possible double-play grounder to Braves shortstop Johnny Logan. Hoak stepped in front of Logan and fielded the grounder with his bare hands. Under the rules in effect at the time, Hoak was ruled out, Bell and Post were safe, and the inning was kept alive. Umpire Frank Secory invoked Rule 7:08F, which provided that if a runner is hit by a batted ball, he’s declared out and the batter is credited with a single. Had the umpires applied Rule 7:08B, where a runner is out if he intentionally interferes with a batted ball, the batter is not credited with a hit.
None of that mattered when Johnny Temple grounded out to end the inning without a run scoring, but Hoak’s actions were the topic of discussion after the game. Naturally, in the Cincinnati clubhouse, they sided with Hoak, stating that his actions were unintentional. The Braves weren’t having any of it. Logan told Associated Press that Hoak acted deliberately to break up a “double play for sure.” Hoak coyly said he raised his hands reflexively to avoid being hit by the ball.
After the game, Major League Baseball amended Rule 7:08B so that if a runner intentionally interferes with a batted ball, both he and the batter are declared out. It was the second rule Hoak was responsible for. As a Brooklyn Dodger, Hoak noticed that there was no rule forcing a baserunner to re-tag the base after a foul ball and frequently tried to take an 89-foot lead on the next pitch. He never got away with it, as the umpires would make him go back and tag the base, invoking Rule 901c, which allowed umpires to essentially make up a rule that’s not covered in the book.
“Christmas in April!”
April 21, 1966: That’s how the AP headline read, the insinuation being that Philadelphia Phillies general manager John Quinn pulled a fast one over the Chicago Cubs when he traded young pitcher Fergie Jenkins and outfielders John Herrnstein and Adolfo Phillips for veteran pitchers Bob Buhl and Larry Jackson. The Phillies planned to insert the two new pitchers into their rotation as the fourth and fifth starters. Phillies manager Gene Mauch told AP, “These two ideally complete our ball club. If there were any doubts of our pitching depth, Jackson and Buhl rectify that.” Wrote AP: “The beauty of this deal from the Philadelphia standpoint is that they gave up three players who would see little service for two starting pitchers.”
In Jenkins, the Cubs got a future Hall-of-Famer who, from 1966-73, was 147-108 with a 3.13 ERA and 48.2 WAR. That stretch included six consecutive seasons with at least 20 wins, three times leading the majors in complete games, a 1971 Cy Young Award, and three All-Star appearances. The Phillies never finished higher than fourth in the NL with Buhl and Jackson on the club. Christmas in April? This trade should have had Quinn and Mauch crying in their eggnog.
Correcting the Record
April 22, 1953: In the eighth inning of a game between the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field, Pirates manager Fred Haney called on Carlos Bernier to pinch-hit for pitcher Paul LaPalme. Bernier then remained in the game to play center field. Thus, the Pirates’ color barrier was broken, as the dark-skinned Puerto Rican made his major league debut. Curtis Roberts is credited with breaking the Pirates’ color barrier in the following year, but it’s clear that Bernier was the first. Roberts was the Pirates’ first African-American. However, the barrier was based on color, not nationality, so it’s a mystery why Bernier was never given his due. Bernier spent just that one season in the majors due to a brutal late-season slump. During his brief time, he tied a major league record by hitting three triples in a game on May 2 against the Redlegs.
Carlos Bernier’s blinding speed made him a legend on the basepaths and a fly-chasing defensive star in the outfield.
Read more about the Puerto Rican center fielder, who spent one season in the big leagues with the @Pirates: https://t.co/MooDZEr4r2 pic.twitter.com/pJLy12vcVp
— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) March 21, 2022
Making the Most of One Hit
April 22, 1959: At Municipal Stadium, the White Sox defeated the hapless Kansas City Athletics, 20-6. In the seventh inning, the White Sox scored 11 runs on one hit. That’s not a typo. The inning included 10 walks, three errors, and a hit batter. Johnny Callison rapped the lone hit. The A’s used three pitchers in the inning: Tom Gorman, Mark Freeman, and George Brunet.
Busted!
April 25, 1981: After so many PED and gambling scandals, I miss the days when baseball figures cheated in funny or cute ways. Before the game at the Seattle Kingdome against the Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners manager Maury Wills ordered the ground crew to lengthen the batter’s box by one foot, making it seven feet in length. During the game, A’s manager Billy Martin smelled a rat and asked home plate umpire Bill Kunkel to measure the box, and he determined that an extra foot had been added in the direction of the pitcher’s mound.
Three days later, the AL hit Wills with a $500 fine and a two-game suspension. “I’m shocked and dumbfounded,” said Wills. “This has never happened to me in 22 years in baseball. There are a lot of other tricks of the trade, such as tilting the baselines, but this one is in the rule books.” Uh, no, it’s not, Maury. Too bad Hoak wasn’t alive to serve as a rule book consultant.
