Another week has gone by, and that means another This Week in Baseball History, where my slogan is “Searching Old Books, Newspapers, and Magazines So You Don’t Have To.” The dates September 13-19 take us to some interesting places.
“I Never Saw It Coming”
September 14, 1962: The day after he was arrested in Baltimore for charging into the stands after a fan, Washington Senators center fielder Jim Piersall was knocked unconscious by a revolving door at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. He was hospitalized and required three stitches to seal a wound on his head. The Associated Press reported, “Just how the accident happened could not be learned immediately.” Speaking to United Press International, Piersall shed some light. Sort of. “Funny thing,” he said. “I was looking straight ahead when suddenly the door swung back and hit me. I never saw it coming.”
Attacked by a revolving door that he never saw coming? I know what you’re thinking, but Piersall famously didn’t drink alcohol. An ad man from Schlitz found that out, to his horror, in 1974 when Piersall was a broadcaster for the Texas Rangers. As recounted in Mike Shropshire’s book, Seasons in Hell, Schlitz had become the main sponsor for the Rangers’ radio network. During a media party in Arlington Stadium’s press room, the author was having an argument with the ad man when Piersall wandered by. The ad man turned to Piersall and said, “Jimmy! Have a Schlitz!” Piersall said, “I don’t drink that [censored] goat piss” and kept walking. So much for the Official Beer of the Rangers.
Numbers 30 and 535
September 14, 1968: Detroit Tigers right-hander Denny McLain did what no pitcher had done in 34 years, or since, when he notched his 30th win against the Oakland Athletics at Tiger Stadium by a 5-4 score. Despite giving up four runs, McLain went the distance, striking out 10 and surrendering six hits, two of which were home runs by Oakland right fielder Reggie Jackson. Jackson’s second blast put the A’s ahead, 4-3, in the sixth inning, and a nervous Detroit crowd wondered if McLain would have to postpone his date with immortality until his next start. However, in the bottom of the ninth, Al Kaline led off with a walk against Diego Segui and moved to third base one out later on Mickey Stanley’s single. Jim Northrup followed with a grounder to first baseman Danny Cater, who threw the ball over the catcher’s head, allowing Kaline to score and sending Stanley to third. Big left fielder Willie Horton then won the game with a long, line-drive double to left field.
Seated in the stands behind the Tigers’ dugout was the major league’s last 30-game winner, cowboy-hatted Dizzy Dean, who rushed onto the field and joined the Tigers in mobbing McLain. Seated at his locker as fans remained in the stadium shouting “We want Denny,” McLain told a crowd of reporters, “I was confident – even in the ninth. This is the greatest ball club I could ever play for.” Finally, McLain returned to the field to acknowledge the crowd.
September 19, 1968: McLain had a new fan in Mickey Mantle. The Tigers had beaten the New York Yankees, 6-2 at Tiger Stadium, but Mantle was happy. He had belted career home run number 535 off McLain in the eighth inning, vaulting past Jimmie Foxx and into third place on the all-time home run list. As Mantle rounded third, he could be heard shouting “thanks” at McLain in the sparsely attended ballpark. McLain saluted him as he crossed home. “McLain has made a fan of me for life,” Mantle told UPI. It appeared that McLain purposely gave the aging slugger a cupcake of a pitch, which he denied. “I didn’t throw it to him. It was a good pitch, a fastball low,” said McLain. His catcher, Jim Price, concurred. “Mantle was just kidding by his actions,” he said.
A different story came out years later. The Tigers were winning, 6-1, when Mantle stepped to the plate with nobody on base. McLain called Price to the mound. According to author Sridhar Pappu in The Year of the Pitcher, McLain told Price, “I want Mantle to hit one.” Price was confused. “You’re kidding, right?” the catcher asked. McLain said, “[Censored], Price, he can’t hit a six-run homer!” Price squatted behind the plate and told Mantle what was up. Not quite believing, Mantle took two mediocre fastballs right over the plate for strikes. After he fouled one off, McLain asked him where he wanted the ball. Mantle signaled for a waist-high, inside pitch and sent it into the upper deck in right field.
The next batter, Joe Pepitone, signaled where he wanted the ball. McLain fired a hard one at his head, sending Pepitone sprawling. According to Mantle biographer Jane Leavy, Pepitone said, “I get up. I look at the dugout. Mickey’s got his hand over his mouth, laughin’ his ass off.” Later, baseball commissioner William Eckert sent McLain a letter, threatening an investigation. The next evening, Mantle hit his 536th homer, legitimately, at Yankee Stadium off Boston Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg.
The Social Leper Wins One
September 14, 1978: We continue to follow the amazing comeback of the Atlanta Braves’ 39-year-old knuckleball pitcher Jim Bouton. On this date, he defeated the San Francisco Giants, 4-1, at Candlestick Park, earning his first major league win since July 11, 1970. He pitched six innings, gave up three hits and three walks, and didn’t allow an earned run. Bouton was removed in favor of a pinch-hitter with the score tied, 1-1. The Braves then scored two in the top of the seventh inning to make him a winner. Craig Skok and Gene Garber finished the game on the mound for Atlanta. Once again, the opposition’s reviews were less than kind. Most vocal was Giants second baseman Bill Madlock, who was hitless. He told UPI, “Craig Skok looked like Lefty Gomez after Bouton. I don’t want to see him again. I don’t want to face him again. Bouton was a joke.” Wrote Bouton in Ball Four Plus Ball Five, “I almost forgot who won the game.”
September 19, 1978: Bouton returned to the Astrodome to face the Houston Astros, for whom he pitched in 1969 and 1970, and their big, hard-throwing ace, J.R. Richard. On paper, it should have been a mismatch. But the two starters battled one another for seven innings and left the game with the score tied, 2-2. Bouton gave up five hits, five walks, and struck out one. Richard surrendered three hits and three walks while striking out 11. Atlanta won the game, 3-2, on Bob Horner’s ninth-inning RBI double off Joaquin Andujar. Bouton wrote, “There was no criticism this time, just silence.”
“A Sad Day”
September 14, 1994: The ongoing players’ strike did what two World Wars and an earthquake couldn’t do: It canceled the World Series. Calling it “a sad day,” acting commissioner Bud Selig announced that the owners voted to cancel the remainder of the season and the postseason. Among other things, it deprived the Montreal Expos of their best shot at a championship and Tony Gwynn of a chance to become the first major leaguer to hit .400 since Ted Williams did it in 1941. Gwynn was hitting .394 at the time. I’ll spare the reader the contents of Selig’s statement and the various rebuttals from the players and their union. I have a feeling we’ll all have a chance to read similar statements very soon.
Statistical Oddities
September 15, 1950: How does a pitcher throw a complete game without getting credit for a start? St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Red Munger found out. Cloyd Boyer started for St. Louis that day at Ebbets Field against the Brooklyn Dodgers. After taking the mound to begin the bottom of the first inning, he was injured while warming up. Munger replaced him and went the distance, defeating Brooklyn, 6-2, scattering nine hits and three walks while striking out three.
September 15, 1971: Then there’s the sad case of Astros right-hander Larry Yount, Robin Yount’s less-famous brother. With the Astros trailing the Braves, 4-1, in the Astrodome, Larry was brought in to relieve in the top of the ninth for his major league debut. However, he felt a pain in his elbow while warming up and left the game before even facing a batter. It was his only appearance in the majors. He’s credited with a game played and thus has his name in The Baseball Encyclopedia. Larry continued to pitch in the minors through 1975 but never got the call again.
Larry Yount, Robin’s older brother, is the only pitcher in history to appear in the record books, yet never face a batter. He was injured during warm-ups in his only outing. https://t.co/5QqQIhijvv
— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) February 3, 2024
The Cold War Reaches Baseball
September 15, 1952: The New York Times reported that the Russian magazine Smena claimed that American “beizbol” was stolen from “lapta,” which “was played in Russian villages when the United States was not even marked on the map.” Furthermore, Smena called baseball a “beastly battle, a bloody fight with mayhem and murder,” where players and spectators routinely die. In fact, the only major league player to die from an injury occurred during a game was Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman, who died after being beaned by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays in 1920.
Undeterred by the facts, the magazine went on to cite the case of “the famous player Garri Kellman,” writing, “For several years he played on the best teams, and having gone into retirement, he died of starvation.” There’s no record of a player by the name of Garri Kellman ever having played professional baseball. The only Kellman in the official records was Leon Kellman, who played in the Negro American League from 1946-48 and died in 2003. (The Russian alphabet doesn’t include the letter “h.” The Times surmised that Smena may have been referring to Harry Heilmann of the Tigers. Heilmann worked as a broadcaster after he retired as a player and died of a heart attack in 1951.) The magazine went on to refer to American ballplayers as “slaves,” noting that even greats like Babe Ruth (“Babis Rut”) and Ty Cobb (“Tai Kopb”) were traded.
September 16, 1909: William Howard Taft became the first sitting US President to attend a major league baseball game, when he witnessed a remarkable pitching duel at West Side Grounds between the New York Giants’ Christy Mathewson and the Chicago Cubs’ Mordecai Brown, with the visiting Giants winning, 2-1. The announcement that Taft would be attending drew a crowd of 35,000. The guess here is that none of them had to go through a metal detector or a weapons check before entering. The next year, Taft became the first President to throw a ceremonial first pitch, and various sources credit him with popularizing the seventh inning stretch, proving that it’s not always easy to be a “sitting” President. Let’s see Vladimir Putin have the same impact on lapta.
When the Pirates were the Lumber Company
September 15, 1978: Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Phil Garner hit a first-inning grand slam off Expos lefty Woodie Fryman, leading the Pirates to a 6-1 victory at Three Rivers Stadium. It was the second consecutive game in which Garner hit a grand slam, making him the eighth player in major league history to accomplish the feat and the first National League hitter since Jimmy Sheckard for the Brooklyn Superbas in 1901. Only the Babis – er, I mean the Babe – did it twice.
September 16, 1975: Another Pirates second baseman, Rennie Stennett, established a major league record when he went 7-for-7 against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Every Pirate in the starting lineup, including pitcher John Candelaria, got at least one hit, as the Pirates won, 22-0, on 24 hits. Sevens were wild as the win lowered Pittsburgh’s magic number for clinching the NL East Division title to seven.
The 100-Pound Salami
September 18, 1965: Before the Yankees faced the Tigers (and lost, 4-3, in 10 innings) at Yankee Stadium, they honored Mantle with Mickey Mantle Day on the occasion of his 2,000th game with the club. The event drew $10,000 in donations, which Mantle asked be donated to the Mickey Mantle Hodgkin’s Disease Research Foundation. That disease had killed his father. In attendance were Yankees great Joe DiMaggio and US Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Mantle was showered with gifts – a new car, clothes for his entire family, an oil painting, two rifles, two quarter horses, a year’s supply of gasoline and bubble gum, and a six-foot-long, 100-pound salami in the shape of a baseball bat. Somebody dropped the ball by not including a six-foot-long loaf of Italian bread.
DiMaggio made his way through the line shaking the players’ hands, but snubbed Kennedy; he believed that the Kennedys were responsible for the death of Marilyn Monroe, to whom DiMaggio was married for nine months (or approximately as long as it took Pedro Báez to deliver a pitch in the pre-pitch clock era) in 1954. Mantle thanked the crowd of 51,664, saying, “I hope I have lived up to everyone’s expectations in the 15 years I’ve been here and I wish I had 15 more.”
The Cubs Had Their Lumber Company, Too
September 18, 1999: Sammy Sosa of the Cubs became the first player in major league history to hit 60 home runs in a season twice. The big blow came off Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jason Bere in the sixth inning at Wrigley Field. However, Milwaukee won the game, 7-4, in 14 innings. Sosa told Rick Gano of the AP, “I was getting a bit anxious up there, a little out of control, swinging at everything because everybody was waiting for this moment. I wanted to get it done and that’s why I was out of control. Now I can relax. Of all the players that have played this game, for me to be the first one, I’m proud.” Of course, the accomplishment later became tainted with allegations of performance-enhancing drugs and Sosa’s behavior at a Congressional hearing on the subject, during which he absurdly brought an interpreter despite speaking fluent English. Although The Times reported that Sosa tested positive for PEDs in 2003, Sosa has denied taking them.
September 19, 1955: The Cubs’ Ernie Banks, who earlier in the month set a record for the most home runs in a season by a shortstop, added another single-season record to his resume by launching his fifth grand slam off Cardinals right-hander Lindy McDaniel. Banks set the record in the seventh inning of a 12-inning 6-5 loss at Busch Stadium. In this second full season, the 24-year-old had already established himself as one of the game’s stars. No wonder he always wanted to “play two.”
