The period May 3-9 marks the anniversary of a few fairly significant events in baseball history. Some amusing ones, too.
Delivering the Cash
May 3, 1947: Chester L. Smith of The Pittsburgh Press called it “the biggest deal in the history of the Pittsburgh club” when the Pittsburgh Pirates traded speedy outfielder Al Gionfriddo and cash to the Brooklyn Dodgers for Hank Behrman, Kirby Higbe, Dixie Howell, Gene Mauch, and Cal McLish. Baseball Reference lists the cash amount at $100,000. The Press account had it at “more than $125,000.” Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey had a highly questionable clause in his contract that gave him a percentage of any cash received in player transactions. He was often criticized for preferring cash sales of players rather than trades. So why even bother getting Gionfriddo in the deal? The joke in Brooklyn was that somebody had to deliver all that cash. It turned out to be a better deal for the Dodgers than the Pirates when Gionfriddo made perhaps the greatest catch in the history of the World Series, robbing Joe DiMaggio of a three-run home run in Game 6 of the 1947 Series.
Before the Term “DYI” was in Vogue
May 3, 1964: At County Stadium, Milwaukee Braves right-hander Hank Fischer tossed a two-hitter to defeat the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0. Fischer also knocked in the lone run in the second inning. With Joe Torre on third base with two outs, Phillies pitcher Art Mahaffey intentionally walked eighth hitter Denis Menke to bring up Fischer, who was hitless for the year. Fischer spoiled that strategy by stroking a ground-ball single up the middle to score Torre. Fischer, a 24-year-old converted reliever, retired the last 16 Phillies batters to earn the victory.
Astros Fans’ Enthusiasm Laid Bare
May 3, 1974: The visiting St. Louis Cardinals and the Houston Astros were tied, 1-1, in the Astrodome, when, during the seventh-inning stretch, two naked females streaked across the field. The Astros rallied in the bottom of the seventh, loading the bases with no outs against Cardinals pitcher Alan Foster. Then Doug Rader smashed a single to left field to score two runs. Tommy Helms followed with an RBI single off reliever Mike Garman. Houston hurler Claude Osteen pitched all nine innings and made the 4-1 lead hold up. The streakers were credited with distracting the Cardinals just barely enough to make the three-run rally possible and strip them of any chance of victory.
Planting a Rose at Third Base
May 3, 1975: Cincinnati Reds manager Sparky Anderson named Pete Rose his permanent third baseman, moving him from left field. Previously, Rose had played just 16 games at the hot corner in the majors, all occurring early in the 1966 season. “I’m just hoping Pete will do an adequate job,” Anderson told United Press International. “I don’t expect him to be spectacular.” That night, Rose went 1-for-4 with a double and played flawlessly in the field in a 6-1 victory over the Atlanta Braves in Riverfront Stadium. More importantly, it opened up left field for slugger George Foster, who hit 23 home runs in 1975, while filling a gaping hole at third where three players had combined for a .162 batting average. The Reds, of course, had a good team before this, but now the Big Red Machine was born.
Through the Wall
May 3, 1998: The Pirates weren’t having a good day at Three Rivers Stadium. They were losing big to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 9-0, in the top of the sixth inning, and the Dodgers weren’t finished. They had runners on first and third with one out when Mike Piazza hit a screaming liner to right field off Elmer Dessens. Right fielder Turner Ward, who gave up his gig as the coach of his son’s tee-ball team to join the Bucs in the previous year, took off after the ball and caught it while crashing through the right-field wall. Ward disappeared and returned to the playing surface. He suffered a two-inch gash on his forearm, temporarily lost the feeling in his right throwing arm, and was removed from the game.
The Dodgers won, 10-5, but after the game, all anybody could talk about was Ward’s catch. “Never seen one quite like it,” Ward’s manager, Gene Lamont, told Paul Meyer of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It was a great play, but it wasn’t something that surprised me, with the way Turner plays.” Said Ward, “You try to disappear when you make a bad play. When you make a good play, you don’t want to disappear.” Sorry, gentlemen, I couldn’t find a video of the Astrodome streakers, but I can show you Ward’s catch and crash.
Victory for the Blackberries
May 4, 1871: In the first game in Major League Baseball history, the Fort Wayne Kekiongas defeated the Cleveland Forest Citys, 2-0, to open the National Association season. The occasion wasn’t deemed important enough to appear in any newspaper account that my crack research team (me) could locate. However, I can tell you that in front of an estimated 200 attendees, the winning pitcher was 19-year-old Bobby Mathews, who’s credited with being the first player in MLB history, and the loser was “Uncle” Al Pratt. As I write this, there have been 23,673 MLB players with the debut of Brian Fitzpatrick of the Milwaukee Brewers on April 29.
In case you’re wondering – sure, you are – what a Kekionga is, the team was named for the capital city of the Native American Miami people, situated at the confluence of the Saint Joseph and Saint Marys Rivers in what today is Indiana. The word “Kekionga” literally means “blackberry bush.” The name failed to strike fear in the hearts of those opponents not afflicted with vatomourophobia. Despite their first-game success, Fort Wayne finished in eighth place in the nine-team NA with a 7-12 record.
“A Remarkable Game”
May 5, 1904: Apparently, the term “perfect game” was not yet in use. The wire service reporter described it as a “remarkable game” when Cy Young of the Boston Americans tossed the third perfect game in major league history, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-0, at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds. Young struck out eight batters, and the reporter noted that “the entire team had nine assists.”
It Wasn’t His Last
May 6, 1915: It wasn’t deemed worthy of mention in the wire service report, but Boston Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth hit his first career home run while pitching 12.1 innings in a 4-3 loss to the New York Yankees at the Polo Grounds. According to the report, “Ruth of Boston pitched well, errors by [Heinie] Wagner and [Mike] McNally and the inability of the Boston catchers to stop the Yankee base runners [prevented] him from winning in nine innings.” Indeed, two of the four runs surrendered by Ruth were unearned. At the plate, Ruth went 3-for-5, including his solo blast.
Oops!
May 6, 1951: In the first game of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds, the Reds led the New York Giants, 4-3, in the bottom of the 10th inning. The Giants’ Whitey Lockman led off the inning with a single. Al Dark sacrificed him to second base, with second baseman Connie Ryan recording the putout at first base. Ryan kept the ball hidden in his glove, trotted toward second base, and asked Lockman to step off the base so he could straighten it out. Lockman dutifully obliged, and Ryan tagged him out for a double play. Monte Irvin grounded out to Ryan to end the game. Hopefully, Lockman avoided manager Leo Durocher when he got back to the dugout. Lockman started the second game, an indication that Durocher didn’t strangle him between games.
May 8, 2000: The home team, the Florida Marlins, had a runner on third base with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Braves, when Atlanta manager Bobby Cox summoned left-hander John Rocker from the bullpen to preserve a 2-2 tie. In the previous year’s December 23 issue of Sports Illustrated, Rocker had made some homophobic and xenophobic comments, which drew disciplinary action from MLB. Thus, fans outside Atlanta didn’t feel too bad when Rocker let the ball drop from his glove while he stood on the pitching rubber, balking in the winning run. Today, Rocker is active on social media, where he hasn’t toned down the rhetoric since the controversial SI article. I thought about looking up some of his posts in preparation for this article, but decided to hit myself in the head with a hammer instead.
