Strange & Amazing Baseball Stories Read online

  SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

  STRANGE & AMAZING

  BASEBALL STORIES

  Bill Gutman

  Introduction

  On the surface, baseball is a very simple game. The pitcher throws the ball toward home plate and the batter tries to hit it. That has been the essence of the professional game since it began well over 100 years ago. Yet if you account for all the different things that can happen during a ball game, baseball becomes perhaps the most complex sport of them all.

  There is an old expression that baseball is so difficult because the batter has to hit a round ball with a round bat and the object is to hit it square. That may be a play on words, but there is some truth to it. Hall of Famer Ted Williams, among others, always contended that hitting a baseball was the most difficult skill to master in all of sports. That may well be true. Yet there have been many great hitters in the history of the game, as well as a wealth of great pitchers. Add to that the great fielders, exciting base runners, top strategists, and the psychological battles that are fought every game, and it's easy to understand why anything can happen on the diamond.

  But even all of that doesn't quite make baseball the great game that it is. There are also the many and varied individuals who have crossed the playing fields of America down through the years. It is these personalities who have shaped the game and given it its great traditions. They have also contributed to and created the great moments, as well as the funny and strange events that have occurred during the seasons of play.

  Strange and Amazing Baseball Stories will look at some of the unusual happenings over the years involving both the great and the ordinary player. The book will prove, once and for all, that you can never predict what will happen at the ballpark. The game of baseball may begin with the pitcher throwing the ball toward the batter. But along the way that little white baseball can take some pretty unexpected twists and turns. AS funny as the stories sound, as strange as they may be, as amazing to believe, each and every one has something in common. They really happened.

  Chapter 1

  ONCE IN A LIFETIME

  In all the years professional baseball has been played, certain events and occurrences stand out as once-in-a-lifetime happenings. Some are simply unusual, some humorous, while others border on the fantastic, and a few are even tragic. But no matter the tone, all have a common link. They have happened just once and may never happen again. The following anecdotes are just some of these strange, funny, and amazing once-in-a-lifetime events that have become a permanent part of baseball folklore.

  Every player remembers his first big league at bat. It's a moment forever etched in his memory, something he'll never forget. But for Billy Herman of the Chicago Cubs, the memory isn't complete. He can only recall one-half of his major league debut at the plate. Ultimately one of the finest players of his generation, Herman compiled a .304 lifetime batting average from 1931 to 1947. But when the Cubs called him up from the minors in the middle of the 1931 season, the twenty-two-year-old rookie was anxious to make a big impression.

  Digging in against Cincinnati hurler Si Johnson, Billy got his pitch and swung from the heels. He heard the crack of the bat on the ball . . . but that's all he heard. He had fouled the ball off the ground behind the plate with tremendous force. The ball then bounced up and smacked Billy in the back of the head, knocking him out cold.

  So before his first at bat in the major leagues could be completed, Billy Herman was being carried from the field on a stretcher. He would always remember his first at bat, all right at least the part before the lights went out!

  A debut of another kind was made by Hoyt Wilhelm, the brilliant knuckleball relief pitcher who started his career with the New York Giants in 1952. Wilhelm's knuckler kept him in the majors until 1972, when he was nearly forty-nine years old, and in that time he made more mound appearances than any other pitcher in baseball history.

  But it was his debut at the plate that must have made the Giants wonder if Wilhelm was actually a slugging outfielder disguised as a pitcher. His first time up as a major league batter, Wilhelm took a big cut, and he belted one over the left field fence for a home run! A couple of innings later he was up again and showed everyone it was no fluke. This time he hit a shot into the gap between the outfielders and legged it into a triple. You can't start much better than that.

  Perhaps the Giants were already thinking they had another Babe Ruth on their hands (the Babe started out as a pitcher before his great bat forced his conversion to the outfield). Luckily, the Giants didn't make any hasty decisions. Before long, Wilhelm settled into a groove as a typical light-hitting pitcher. In fact, during the course of his long career, which saw him pitch for nine teams in both leagues over twenty-one seasons, Hoyt Wilhelm never hit another home run. Nor did he ever hit another triple! He got it all out of his system his first two at bats and then concentrated on being one of the great relief pitchers of all time.

  For some players, a home run is a great rarity. But for Mike Schmidt, the slugging third baseman of the Philadelphia Phillies, the home run has always been his bread and butter. There is nearly unanimous agreement among baseball people that Schmidt is one of the premier sluggers of the 1970s and '80s. Yet Mike will always remember one particular home run he didn't hit... or is it the home run he almost hit... or was it the home run he should have hit?

  It happened in June of 1974, during Mike's second year with the PhiIs when he was emerging as a top National League home run hitter. The Phillies were visiting the Houston Astrodome, the first domed stadium in baseball, and in his first at bat, Mike Schmidt hit one a ton.

  At the crack of the bat everyone knew the ball was gone. Centerfielder Cesar Cederio, one of the best flychasers in the league, didn't even move. It was just a question of how far into the centerfield seats the ball would travel. But one thing went wrong. The Astrodome, billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, got in the way.

  The ball was already some 300 feet from home plate and about 117 feet high when it suddenly slammed smack into a public address speaker that was suspended from the Astrodome roof. Instead of traveling into the seats, the ball came straight down and landed back on the playing field. Under Astrodome ground rules, the ball was still in play. Schmidt had already gone into his home run trot and had just passed first base when the ball landed. He stopped in his tracks and retreated to the bag, his mouth open in disbelief. He had to settle for a single.

  Witnesses estimated the ball would have gone more than 500 feet if it hadn't hit the speaker. And those who designed the ballpark figured no hitter was powerful enough to put a ball up there. But Mike Schmidt did it. And because of that speaker, he probably holds the record for the hardest hit single in baseball history.

  "I think people will start to realize that I'm around now," was all Schmidt could say. And he was right.

  While Mike Schmidt might have been robbed of a home run by a loudspeaker, years ago a player once hit a homer because of a stack of misplaced baseballs. It happened in the old Federal League, which was trying to establish itself as a third major league back in 1914. Only one umpire had showed up for the game, so he was calling balls and strikes from behind the pitcher's mound.

  Since umpires did not carry a supply of new baseballs in their pockets back then, the fresh balls were placed in a stack beside the ump and behind the pitcher. It didn't take long for that maneuver to backfire. A batter named Grover Land promptly lined a pitch back toward the mound and it connected with the stack of baseballs, scattering them like the balls on a pool table.

  Land began circling the bases as the infielders grabbed at the nearest baseball and tried to tag him. The problem was that no one could prove w
hich one was the batted ball and umpire Bill Brennan felt he had no recourse but to rule the hit a home run. It had to be one of the shortest home runs of all time and probably the last time a stack of baseballs was left on the playing field.

  Then there was the home run that was, then wasn't, then was again. On July 24, 1983, the New York Yankees were playing the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium. The Yanks had a 4-3 lead in the top of the ninth with their ace reliever, Rich Gossage, on the mound. With two out and one man on, George Brett, the Royals' top hitter was at the plate.

  In a classic confrontation, Brett picked out a Gossage fastball and took it downtown, smashing a two-run homer to give K.C. a 5-4 lead. But wait a minute! Seconds after a smiling Brett trotted across home plate, Yankee manager Billy Martin was out of the dugout, showing plate umpire Tim McClelland something in the rulebook. Then Martin was pointing at Brett's bat.

  Many players in recent years have taken to wiping pine tar on their bats, a black, sticky substance that gives them a better grip. Because of that, a rule was made limiting the pine tar to eighteen inches above the knob end of the bat. Martin claimed the pine tar on Brett's bat exceeded the eighteen-inch limit, making the bat illegal.

  After examining the bat, the umpire agreed with Martin. He called Brett out, disallowing the homer and declaring the Yanks 4-3 winners. Brett and the Royals went berserk, while Martin and the Yanks looked on. Now they were smiling.

  But the Royals weren't finished. They protested to American League president Lee MacPhail. After some consideration, MacPhail ruled in favor of the Royals. He said that while the bat was technically illegal, it didn't violate "the spirit of the rules," and the homer counted. The game would have to be finished with the Royals leading, 5-4. The Yanks would have one more at bat. So the Brett homer was on again. This time the Yanks complained, but to no avail. The completion took a little more than nine minutes as the Yanks went down in order in the bottom of the ninth. People to this day still debate MacPhail's interpretation of the rules and the pine tar game, as it's now called, is a once-in-a-lifetime part of baseball's folklore. But with all the argument and debate, perhaps it was Yankee outfielder Don Baylor who summed it up best. Leaving the field after the completion of the game, Baylor said:

  "If I wanted to watch a soap opera, I'd have stayed home and turned on the television."

  Mention the name of Babe Ruth and people think only of home runs. After all, he was the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, the man who blasted sixty homers in 1927 and 714 over his long career. While both those marks have since been broken, the Babe nevertheless remains the greatest symbol of home run power in baseball history.

  Then there is the legend of the Babe, the stories about his enormous appetite, his spending, and the way his home runs resurrected the game of baseball after the Black Sox scandal of 1919. There are also stories of how he inspired kids. In a movie about his life, there was a scene in which a handicapped youngster walked after being encouraged by the Babe. Critics said it was pure nonsense.

  But there is a story strangely similar to the movie version related by one of the most respected baseball writers of the century. Fred Lieb, who covered big league baseball for more than sixty years, was with the Yankees in the mid 1920s when the team was playing a spring training game in Tampa, Florida. Shortly after the game began, Lieb saw a big black car pull up and park just outside the rightfield foul line. Like other members of the press, Fred Lieb thought the car belonged to some dignitary and forgot about it.

  After the game, the Yankee players left the field and ran past the car to reach their bus, which would take the club back to St. Petersburg. A few minutes later, Lieb's wife, Mary, told her husband she had just had a tip from Leo Durocher, then a young player with the Yanks, that if Lieb went over to the black car he would have a whale of a story.

  It might not have been as dramatic as in the movies, but it didn't miss by much. When Fred Lieb went over to the car, he found a man and a boy about ten. The man was delirious with joy and had tears running down his face. When he saw the young reporter, he couldn't wait to tell him the news.

  "This is the first time in two years that my boy has stood up," he cried. "Look at him standing here!"

  He went on to relate how his son had lost his ability to walk and stand two years earlier. Confined to his room, he began idolizing the Babe, collecting photos and clippings, and following the Yankees feverishly. When the father heard the Yanks would be in Tampa, he got special permission to park near the field so his son could be as close to the Babe as possible.

  When the players had run past the car on their way to the bus, the Babe had waved into the window and said, "Hello, kid." And just like in the movies, the young boy struggled to his feet to return the greeting. It's an unbelievable story, but a true one.

  "I myself saw one of Ruth's miracles," Fred Lieb later wrote, adding that Leo Durocher, who was running to the bus behind the Babe, "later confirmed the entire story."

  But that was the Babe. He was capable of most anything on a ballfield, and he performed a few miracles off the field, as well.

  As if on-field heroics aren't enough, baseball players from time to time get a strange urge to try something new and different away from the diamond. Back in the early days of the century, Washington Senators' catcher Gabby Street made a surprising announcement. He would try to catch a baseball dropped from the top of the Washington Monument, a 450-foot structure erected in memory of our nation's first president, George Washington.

  Until then, Street was best known as the catcher for the Senators' super pitcher, fastballer Walter Johnson, who won more than 400 games in his career. But the day he stood at the foot of the Washington Monument, Street was on his own. He was taking a chance and he knew it. A ball dropped from that height would have tremendous speed when it reached the bottom. A last-second shift in the wind or a slight misjudgment, and Street could be badly hurt... or worse.

  A friend of the catcher went to the top of the monument with a number of baseballs and began dropping them, one by one. At first, the wind was the enemy. It blew the balls out of reach, or back into the monument, so they bounced away. Finally, they switched to the other side of the structure where the wind wasn't so bad. Now Street had a chance.

  His friend dropped another ball and the catcher circled under it, as if it was a high foul pop. It seemed to take forever to come down as Gabby Street moved back and forth, trying to follow the flight of the ball. POP! It finally landed in Street's glove with such force that the catcher staggered and almost fell. But he held on.

  Several years later, someone brought up the accomplishment to Street, remarking that they never thought it could be done.

  "Heck, it was easy," Street answered quickly. "You forget I spend the summer catching Johnson's fastball every four or five days."

  Unfortunately, not all the once-in-a-lifetime happenings in baseball evoke laughter or wonderment. Like all sports, baseball has an element of danger in it. Numerous players down through the years have suffered severe injuries on the diamond. A number of them, like superstar pitchers Dizzy Dean and Sandy Koufax, have seen their careers shortened or ended by injury. But only once in the long history of the game has a player lost his life as the result of an accident on the ballfield.

  It happened on August 16, 1920. The New York Yankees were playing the Cleveland Indians at the old Polo Grounds in New York. Both clubs were battling for the American League pennant and emotions were running high. The Yanks were pitching their ace, Carl Mays, a right-handed submarine pitcher who delivered the ball from such a low angle that his knuckles sometimes scraped the ground.

  The Indians had a 3-0 lead when their shortstop, Ray Chapman, came up to lead off the fifth inning. Chapman was a right-handed hitter who crouched over the plate. He had worked the count to one and one when Mays delivered a hard submarine pitch that came in high and tight. The ball kept rising toward Chapman's head. Most players make some kind of effort to get out of the way, but for what
ever reason, Ray Chapman just froze, and the ball slammed into the side of his head by the temple.

  Chapman went down, then got up, as if to start toward first base. Then he collapsed once again. He was rushed to a hospital where he died before the next morning. Many players, as well as the public, tended to blame Mays for the tragedy, claiming he had thrown at Chapman's head intentionally. But one who absolved the pitcher was Chapman's teammate, Hall of Famer Tris Speaker.

  "I don't think Mays deliberately threw at Chappie," Speaker said. "There was time for him to duck, but he never moved. Sure, it was a tight pitch, but we're trained to duck when the ball is coming at us."

  Carl Mays continued as a top pitcher. He hurled twenty-six wins that year, and eventually won more than 200 games. But even today, he is remembered more as the pitcher who delivered the only fatal pitch in the history of the game.

  Chapter 2

  HEY, HAVE I GOT A GREAT IDEA!

  Like all the other sports, baseball has had its share of innovators, people who have had visions about changing the game. Some of the changes have become permanent, while others have fallen quickly by the wayside. There have also been many short-term promotions, designed to bring fans to the ballpark. Some of these, such as bat day, cap day, and ball day have caught on all around the leagues. Others have been one-shot fiascos, and still others have caused major problems. But whatever the result, these innovations and promotions were all started with the same thought--"Hey, have I got a great idea!"

  Ever wonder why baseball umpires signal a strike by raising their right arms, or signal an out by jerking back their right thumbs? Safe, of course, is both hands thrown out to the sides, palms down. Well, it wasn't always that way. There was a time when the amp just shouted the balls and strikes, safe and out calls. It took a player who couldn't hear them to change things around.