FASTEST FOR ONE PITCH: UHLE
It Even Handcuffed Babe Ruth!
"Who was the owner of the fastest pitched ball in baseball history? Amos Rusie, of the old-time New York Giants, was a mighty man when it came to whistling the ball plateward. The same can be said of Cy Young, in the way back days at the turn of the century when he was with Cleveland, St. Louis, Boston and Cleveland a second time.
Walter Johnson, great pitcher of the Washington Senators, generally regarded as Mr. Speed as a result of utilizing nothing but fast offerings to baffle Ty Cobb, Larry Lajoie and other star hitters of the day, unquestionably threw more fast balls day in and day out than any hurler in history.
Then there's Cleveland's Bob Feller, whose offerings were not even distantly related to what are termed 'butterfly' pitches. The Indians' veteran slab luminary had plenty of swift on the ball until the last several seasons.
Fred Marberry, in the relief role for the Washington Senators, could wheel that apple at the batter. Smoky Joe Wood, pitching for the Boston Red Sox, had plenty of oomph behind every pitch. Virgil Trucks of the Detroit Tigers has plenty of fast and don't let anybody tell you differently. Dizzy Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals belonged in the category of swift pitchers. So did Addie Joss, elongated right-hander with the old Cleveland Naps.
One could probably name a dozen others who would rate in the same category as those mentioned, but one name that was brought to mind by none other than Steve O'Neill, who caught for the old Naps and Indians, from 1911 through 1923, came as rather as a surprise to me.
We were doing a lot of gassing about fastball pitchers when the genial Steve came to bat with his package. We had been talking about how Babe Ruth once remarked the 'hardest pitching nut I had to crack' was a guy named George Uhle. While Big George didn't exactly own the Babe, still one had to consider him in the light of having a mortgage on the home run slugger de luxe.
I remarked George had just about as good a curve ball as I had ever seen and he certainly had the Bambino on the alert every time he faced him. Ruth never knew what to expect from Uhle and, according to O'Neill, the thing that got Babe was when George would let fly with a tremendously fast ball when he had two strikes on the Yankee star.
'Ed,' Steve remarked, 'you know I have caught a lot of pitchers and sort of godfathered Feller when he broke in, and with all due respect to Bob, Johnson, and all the other speedball artists, I don't believe any man ever lived who could throw a ball one iota faster than Uhle could that one certain pitch. It came at you like a shot from a cannon. Noted for his curve ball work, George interspersed fast balls ever and anon, but only on certain occasions did he uncork just about the fastest pitch I ever handled or saw.'
Not only Ruth, but the late Harry Heilmann, one of the truly great right-handed clubbers in baseball history; Lou Gehrig, a remarkable man at the plate in long distance hitting and driving in runs; and Eddie Collins, one of the truly great stars of the game at bat and in the field, were all agreed Uhle's particular fast ball had them baffled. Strangely enough, this stellar quartet of hitters, one right-hander and three off-side sluggers, are no longer of this earth.
O'Neill then gave an example of the superiority of Uhle in utilizing that special pitch. A bunch of outstanding major leaguers played a series of five games against an all-star Negro aggregation in Chicago some years back. The majors lost three games. Earl Whitehill won over the Negro stars, 2-0, and Uhle registered a 1-0 win when he brought his special fast ball into use. There were two out in the ninth with men on second and third when a giant Negro slugger named Suggles, who could hit the ball a country mile, came to bat.
Uhle got two hook strikes on him and Suggles, evidently expecting a third similar offering, set himself and was dazed when something shot past him at tremendous speed and the umpire yelled 'Strike three, you're out.' Steve said to him, 'Were you expecting another curve?' to which Suggles replied, 'I know one thing, mister, I sure didn't get what I was expecting. How fast can that man throw a ball?'
O'Neill paid Uhle the tribute of saying he was a great student of the game and particularly of the great batters. In the case of Gehrig, he knew that Lou would drive a sidearm pitch to left field. A three-quarter pitch would be pulled to right field. However, Uhle settled on the plan to dish up straight overarm pitches to Gehrig and, although Lou connected solidly many times, the drives would generally be out 'Speaker way.'
Ask Uhle about that special fast ball he always had in reserve and he grins and says, 'One or two in each game was enough for me.' "
by Ed Bang, condensed from the Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, April 1952)
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
1952 Yankee of the Past: Dutch Ruether
"Dutch Ruether, the once-great Cincinnati Reds pitcher, was telling about the famous 1919 World Series against the Chicago Black Sox.
'In that first game,' he said, 'I got two triples, a single and a base on balls- a record that's never been beaten. And then- I found out that they were only foolin'.' "
-Earl Wilson in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, August 1952)
'In that first game,' he said, 'I got two triples, a single and a base on balls- a record that's never been beaten. And then- I found out that they were only foolin'.' "
-Earl Wilson in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, August 1952)
Monday, February 4, 2019
1952 Yankee of the Past: Bob Porterfield
"Bob began in 1951 with the Yankees and had appeared in only two games for them when traded. In 21 games in all, he was credited with nine wins and charged with eight defeats. Bob compiled an earned run average of 3.51.
He began in baseball in 1946. He has had bad luck with injuries, but 1952 could be Bob's year."
-1952 Bowman No. 194
"In 1947, his second season of organized baseball, Bob led the Piedmont League with 208 strikeouts. The next year, the Yankees called him up from Newark after he had won 15 and lost 6 and had a league leading 2.17 earned run average. Bob tore a muscle in his throwing arm in '49 and was sent down to Kansas City after a brief stay with the Yankees in '50.
The Senators bought him during the 1951 season and Bob threw three shutouts and a 2-hitter for the Capitol City team."
-1952 Topps No. 301
"Bob began the 1951 season with the Yankees, then was sent to Washington. He appeared in a total of 21 games, winning 9 and losing 8. He did some excellent work with the Senators and is highly regarded. His career with the Yanks was marred by injuries.
He had an excellent record during the war, as a paratrooper."
-1952 Red Man No. AL-17
PORTERFIELD- SENATOR FROM VIRGINIA
Bob's "In" at Washington After Bucky Harris, Who Supported Him in N.Y. and Lost, Votes for Him Again
"Virginia has been going Democratic since Thomas Jefferson's day but the new Senator from Virginia has a Republican middle name, Coolidge. His birth certificate reads: 'Erwin Coolidge Porterfield,' but he's better known as 'Bob.' And he's not interested in politics because he's a baseball pitcher whose seat is on the bench and not in the nation's upper house.
Bob Porterfield is not only a Senator but the most important Senator on the pitching staff of Bucky Harris' aspiring Washington team in the American League. He reported at Griffith Stadium last June and proceeded to win nine games against eight losses for an outfit that finished deep in the second division- and three of his victories were low-hit shutouts. He has arrived at last, although not at the destination he chose.
That destination was Yankee Stadium, New York City. Back in 1948, Red Patterson, the New York Yankees' public relations counselor, would beam over the bar in the press room, 'Porterfield just won his ninth straight,' he would say. Or: 'Porterfield just pitched thirty-six scoreless innings.' These bulletins were being flashed from Ruppert Stadium, Newark, where the handsome young right-hander was burning up the International League. 'Porterfield can't miss,' Red would say, and if you were a betting man you might have wagered that Porterfield would someday succeed to the crown worn by such Yankee ace right-handers as Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, Spud Chandler, Red Ruffing and Bob Shawkey. Porterfield was imported from Newark to the Bronx that August and proceeded to win five games. He was so convinced about the permanence of his Yankee job that he moved bats, ball and baggage from Virginia to Belleville, N.J.
And then fate took a hand. Seated in the parlor of his pretty home in Belleville- just twenty-five minutes from Times Square- he was telling his story as he made spring training preparations:
'Bucky scouted me in Newark that summer of 1948 and when I reported he told me I was to be a regular starter, which pleased me because I pitch best every four days in rotation, with a schedule of running and limbering up my arm in between. It was wonderful being with the Yankees- they were like no other club in the game, playing team ball, dressing and looking the part of champions.
'Well, Bucky was fired that fall- I never knew why. That had nothing to do with my troubles, for Casey Stengel was great to me. I started an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Stadium two days before the 1949 season began. The temperature was 38 and my arm cooled off during a Yankee inning when we scored four runs. I went back to the box, warmed up and felt all right. Then I threw a curve and something went pop. I'd torn the muscles away from the bone in my forearm.
'Afterward I tried and tried to pitch but the pain would be agonizing. On August 1, I breezed through two innings against the Philadelphia Athletics, pulled the muscle again and went home- for the rest of the season.
'In 1950 it was like some superman was after me with a club, swatting me on the head every time I tried to play. I banged my leg in spring practice when Bobby Brown hit a liner I couldn't dodge and was out for a month. Then on June 9, against Detroit, Paul Calvert hit me just below the temple with a pitched ball. It was a close shave- once inch higher and it might have killed me. As it happened, I got a concussion.'
That July, Red Patterson was entrusted with the sad task of handing Bob Porterfield a railroad ticket to Kansas City. There were tears in the big fellow's eyes as he packed his bags. 'I couldn't pitch at K.C.- in fact, I didn't recuperate until the following December. I still have trouble with my left ear. I'm a little deaf on that side.'
Bob reported to the Yankees at Phoenix last spring, an almost forgotten man. 'I appeared in only two regular games, mopping up in one of them with the Boston Red Sox about ten runs ahead. When cutting-down day arrived in May, I was cut down to Kansas City again.'
But Bob, at twenty-seven, was young enough to rebound. 'I had four decisions in about a month, two wins and two defeats,' he says. 'I didn't get enough work because we had too many on the pitching staff. One day Bucky Harris called me on long distance. 'I've got a trade on that includes Bob Kuzava for Fred Sanford, Tom Ferrick and you. How's your arm, Bob?' I told him it was as good as ever, even better because in 1948 I'd just poured fast balls over the plate whereas now I was throwing curves at three different speeds, a changeup and a fast one. 'I'm taking you,' Bucky said- and it was the best news I had heard in three years.
'And Bucky knew that I work best when I work often. He sent me in rotation every four days, except once when he saved me for a fifth day against the Yankees. I beat them that day and might have beaten them a second time- had them shut out with one hit when Mickey Mantle socked a three-run homer. I don't blame the Yankees for giving up on me, but beating them was my thrill of last year.'
Happily for Bob Porterfield, he knows how to take it, for he took plenty during World War II. He dug deep into his memory for the highlights of his young life, and when he couldn't remember details he turned to Vera, his wife. 'What date was that, hon'?' he'd ask. 'Hon', do you remember what happened to me that day. Sure, you do ... ' And Vera, who is tall, slim, fair like her husband, and who also speaks in the pleasantly smooth Virginia drawl, would always know. 'I'm the historian of the Porterfield family,' she said.
He began in baseball in 1946. He has had bad luck with injuries, but 1952 could be Bob's year."
-1952 Bowman No. 194
"In 1947, his second season of organized baseball, Bob led the Piedmont League with 208 strikeouts. The next year, the Yankees called him up from Newark after he had won 15 and lost 6 and had a league leading 2.17 earned run average. Bob tore a muscle in his throwing arm in '49 and was sent down to Kansas City after a brief stay with the Yankees in '50.
The Senators bought him during the 1951 season and Bob threw three shutouts and a 2-hitter for the Capitol City team."
-1952 Topps No. 301
"Bob began the 1951 season with the Yankees, then was sent to Washington. He appeared in a total of 21 games, winning 9 and losing 8. He did some excellent work with the Senators and is highly regarded. His career with the Yanks was marred by injuries.
He had an excellent record during the war, as a paratrooper."
-1952 Red Man No. AL-17
PORTERFIELD- SENATOR FROM VIRGINIA
Bob's "In" at Washington After Bucky Harris, Who Supported Him in N.Y. and Lost, Votes for Him Again
"Virginia has been going Democratic since Thomas Jefferson's day but the new Senator from Virginia has a Republican middle name, Coolidge. His birth certificate reads: 'Erwin Coolidge Porterfield,' but he's better known as 'Bob.' And he's not interested in politics because he's a baseball pitcher whose seat is on the bench and not in the nation's upper house.
Bob Porterfield is not only a Senator but the most important Senator on the pitching staff of Bucky Harris' aspiring Washington team in the American League. He reported at Griffith Stadium last June and proceeded to win nine games against eight losses for an outfit that finished deep in the second division- and three of his victories were low-hit shutouts. He has arrived at last, although not at the destination he chose.
That destination was Yankee Stadium, New York City. Back in 1948, Red Patterson, the New York Yankees' public relations counselor, would beam over the bar in the press room, 'Porterfield just won his ninth straight,' he would say. Or: 'Porterfield just pitched thirty-six scoreless innings.' These bulletins were being flashed from Ruppert Stadium, Newark, where the handsome young right-hander was burning up the International League. 'Porterfield can't miss,' Red would say, and if you were a betting man you might have wagered that Porterfield would someday succeed to the crown worn by such Yankee ace right-handers as Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, Spud Chandler, Red Ruffing and Bob Shawkey. Porterfield was imported from Newark to the Bronx that August and proceeded to win five games. He was so convinced about the permanence of his Yankee job that he moved bats, ball and baggage from Virginia to Belleville, N.J.
And then fate took a hand. Seated in the parlor of his pretty home in Belleville- just twenty-five minutes from Times Square- he was telling his story as he made spring training preparations:
'Bucky scouted me in Newark that summer of 1948 and when I reported he told me I was to be a regular starter, which pleased me because I pitch best every four days in rotation, with a schedule of running and limbering up my arm in between. It was wonderful being with the Yankees- they were like no other club in the game, playing team ball, dressing and looking the part of champions.
'Well, Bucky was fired that fall- I never knew why. That had nothing to do with my troubles, for Casey Stengel was great to me. I started an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Stadium two days before the 1949 season began. The temperature was 38 and my arm cooled off during a Yankee inning when we scored four runs. I went back to the box, warmed up and felt all right. Then I threw a curve and something went pop. I'd torn the muscles away from the bone in my forearm.
'Afterward I tried and tried to pitch but the pain would be agonizing. On August 1, I breezed through two innings against the Philadelphia Athletics, pulled the muscle again and went home- for the rest of the season.
'In 1950 it was like some superman was after me with a club, swatting me on the head every time I tried to play. I banged my leg in spring practice when Bobby Brown hit a liner I couldn't dodge and was out for a month. Then on June 9, against Detroit, Paul Calvert hit me just below the temple with a pitched ball. It was a close shave- once inch higher and it might have killed me. As it happened, I got a concussion.'
That July, Red Patterson was entrusted with the sad task of handing Bob Porterfield a railroad ticket to Kansas City. There were tears in the big fellow's eyes as he packed his bags. 'I couldn't pitch at K.C.- in fact, I didn't recuperate until the following December. I still have trouble with my left ear. I'm a little deaf on that side.'
Bob reported to the Yankees at Phoenix last spring, an almost forgotten man. 'I appeared in only two regular games, mopping up in one of them with the Boston Red Sox about ten runs ahead. When cutting-down day arrived in May, I was cut down to Kansas City again.'
But Bob, at twenty-seven, was young enough to rebound. 'I had four decisions in about a month, two wins and two defeats,' he says. 'I didn't get enough work because we had too many on the pitching staff. One day Bucky Harris called me on long distance. 'I've got a trade on that includes Bob Kuzava for Fred Sanford, Tom Ferrick and you. How's your arm, Bob?' I told him it was as good as ever, even better because in 1948 I'd just poured fast balls over the plate whereas now I was throwing curves at three different speeds, a changeup and a fast one. 'I'm taking you,' Bucky said- and it was the best news I had heard in three years.
'And Bucky knew that I work best when I work often. He sent me in rotation every four days, except once when he saved me for a fifth day against the Yankees. I beat them that day and might have beaten them a second time- had them shut out with one hit when Mickey Mantle socked a three-run homer. I don't blame the Yankees for giving up on me, but beating them was my thrill of last year.'
Happily for Bob Porterfield, he knows how to take it, for he took plenty during World War II. He dug deep into his memory for the highlights of his young life, and when he couldn't remember details he turned to Vera, his wife. 'What date was that, hon'?' he'd ask. 'Hon', do you remember what happened to me that day. Sure, you do ... ' And Vera, who is tall, slim, fair like her husband, and who also speaks in the pleasantly smooth Virginia drawl, would always know. 'I'm the historian of the Porterfield family,' she said.
Then Bob resumed: 'My dad, Jesse P. Porterfield, is a farmer down in Giles County, general farm produce and livestock. I'm the youngest of four brothers, Noble, Cecil, Clyde- whom we call Mack- and myself, and we're all big like me, and the other three could have been ball players, too.
'Dad used to play semipro ball around the countryside- there's no big towns down there and Newport is no town at all, just some 300 farm people. He tried to get all of his to play, stuck a ball in my hand when I was six, and kept at me all the time, teaching me points of the game, pitching, catching, the outfield, positions he had played.
'I pitched and caught on pickup teams. At Newport High, I pitched right through my four years ... won thirty-three games and lost only three. Then, in September 1941, when I was only seventeen, I went into the Army.
'I was inducted at Camp Lee in Virginia and then sent to Camp McQuaide, in California, for infantry basic training. After about eight weeks I was shipped back East to Fort Benning, Georgia, attached to the 82nd Airborne Division. One day they picked thirty-three boys for tests, including me. I was one of the four finally selected as paratroopers.'
Many months were to pass before Bob was awakened early one summer morning. 'It was 3:47 A.M,' he says, as if the hour, minutes and seconds were burned into his brain. 'I climbed on a plane at 5:45 and we were in the air until 8:37 when I jumped ... '
The date was June 6, 1944- D-Day. And as Bob's parachute bore him earthward he saw the hedgerow of Normandy reeling toward him, behind the Nazi lines. 'I don't like to think of what happened that day,' he says. 'Two entire divisions floated down. We had 155s, howitzers, small arms- and didn't know where we were. Our job was to harass the Nazis' rear. We made contact later that day ...'
Bob fought until the enemy retreated across France. He was in engagement in that corner of Belgium and Holland where marshland concealed the bodies of thousands of the fallen. He was trapped for four days at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. He participated in the assault on Aachen which led to the smashing of the Seigfried Line. He crossed the famed river at Remagen Bridgehead and then raced across Germany to meet the Red Army allies. 'And I wound up the war in the heart of Berlin,' he says. 'I actually saw almost all of it in the west.'
There were five 'live jumps' into action- and a piece of shrapnel that lodged in Bob's wrist at Bastogne. 'Didn't amount to anything,' he avers. 'They plucked it out and it's never bothered me.' It was a rich experience, but one that Bob has no desire to repeat.
'I was out of the service on January 31, 1946,' he continues, checking the date with Vera. 'For a while that spring I helped Dad, but by June 1 I was playing baseball on a town team. One day we played Radford, a professional club in the newly organized Blue Ridge League. You won't believe this story but it's true: I was playing second base that day. In the sixth inning our pitcher hurt his arm and I went into the box in the seventh. I fanned nine men in a row.
'That was on a Saturday and we had a Sunday game. Before it started, Eddie Martin, the Radford manager, offered me a contract. For six weeks I pitched every three days for Radford. I guess it was love at first sight.'
And marriage followed within three months because by that time Bob had already been promoted to Norfolk of the Piedmont League. 'H.P. Dawson, who scouts for the Yankees in that neck of the woods, bought me on July 27. Vera and I were married in August. I was lucky- lots of the boys in that Blue Ridge League used to drink cokes and eat two slices of toast for breakfast, they were paid so little ... '
'You ate at our house and looked fat,' interposed Vera.
'And went home to Newport for home cooking,' laughed Bob. 'I won seventeen, lost nine and led the Piedmont League with 209 strikeouts in 1947. That brought me to the Newark Bears in 1948.' At Newark, Bob was easily the best pitcher in the AAA circuit with a winning streak of nine straight, two strings of scoreless innings, thirty-six and thirty-three, not to mention a league-leading ERA of 2.17. 'Russ Derry of Rochester twice beat me out of no-hitters. Once he singled in the seventh, the other time with two out in the ninth.
'Bill Skiff managed the Bears that year and helped me a lot. But my best advice came from Garland Braxton, the old American League pitcher. He taught me the changeup and how to pace myself through a nine-inning game. Later, with the Yankees, Spec Shear taught me the book on American League hitters.'
Then the rook fell in. Bob's luck turned all bad. 'We'd bought this house,' Vera explained. She shook her head. 'You never know what's going to happen in baseball.' At that moment, Vera knew what was happening upstairs in the Belleville house. Sandra, age nine months, was waking from her afternoon nap. Soon Sandra was crawling on the carpet in the company of her four-year-old brother, Bobby Lee, and a messenger was bringing a new collapsible chromium stroller. 'I can't resist a bargain,' Vera confesses.
Neither can Bob. In the driveway was a brand-new pigeon-blue sedan with burgundy fittings. 'I've been looking for a car this color for months. Saw it in the window of a Newark store and had to buy it.'
Nearby on the Jersey meadows are the homes of Yankee stars Phil Rizzuto, Gil McDougald, Yogi Berra and Gene Woodling. 'I was the first Yankee ball player to move around here,' Bob says. 'The woods are full of Yankees now.'
Bob is a Yankee no longer, but he's the Yankee type, Southerner though he may be. Which means that he's become a star, with no regrets that he is not a member of the World Champions. Clark Griffith is paying him a Yankee salary and the future looks bright. 'I'm on a young team now,' he concludes. 'And still young enough to be around when it starts burning up the league ... '
And Bob, barring further misfortune, promises to burn up the American League in 1952. He's ready and willing ... "
-Harold Sheldon, Baseball Digest, April 1952
BUCKY'S BOY
"Ironically, Bob Porterfield is regarded as one of the reasons why Bucky Harris, his present Washington manager, was fired as pilot of the New York Yankees after he led them to a world title in 1947 and finished third, two and one-half games out, in 1948. Harris' insistence on bringing in Porterfield from the Yankees' Newark farm in midseason, 1948, against General Manager George Weiss' wishes fomented friction between the two."
-Harold Sheldon, Baseball Digest, April 1952
Friday, January 18, 2019
1952 Yankee of the Past: Bobo Newsom
HE'D BE SCRATCHED!
"Commissioner K.M. Landis once heard that Bobo Newsom, now pitching again for Washington, was a horseplayer and called him into his office.
'I understand that you play the races.'
'Yes, I occasionally lay a few bucks on a hot tip,' admitted Bobo.
'That's very wrong,' said the Judge. 'Now supposing you had a bet on a horse, your team was one run behind going into the ninth inning, the bases were filled and you came to bat, what would you be thinking of, the ball game or how your horse came out?'
'Judge,' said Bobo, 'if my team was behind going into the ninth and the bases were filled, I'd never come to bat.'
The decision went to Bobo."
-H.G. Salsinger in the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
BOBO LEAVES 'EM LAUGHING
"There are two Bobo Newsom stories kicking around. The first is that the veteran hurler, just bounced by Washington for a fifth time, was standing around in front of a Boston hotel one night this spring offering to bet two rookies he could name the capital of every state in the Union. A veteran going by heard him and said, 'You should. You've played in every one of them.'
A Washington writer said that a while back when Bucky Harris was short of pitchers, he said he might have to start Newsom. A reporter decided to enlarge on the details, so he called Bobo's hotel room and asked when was the last time Bobo had started a major league game. 'It was in 1948,' said Bobo without a moment's hesitation, 'when I was with the New York Giants. Pitched the opener against the Boston Braves, held them to four hits and beat Johnny Sain, 1-0.' The reporter, knowing that Bobo is never one to bother with minor facts, checked his record books and found that Bobo's record was won none, lost one. He called Bobo and informed him what the record book said. 'That,' said Bobo, 'is not the way I remember it at all, but let it be, it's too late to change a mistake like that.' "
-Gerry Hern in the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, August 1952)
WAIT TIL' MRS. NEWSOM READS THIS
"Of course, there had to be something unusual about Bobo Newson's wedding. The ceremony was performed at 11:59 on New Year's Eve in 1943.
'My wife didn't want to be married in a leap year (1944),' the veteran hurler with the Philadelphia Athletics explained. 'And I delayed it as long as I could.' "
-Ed Pollack in the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
BOBO AND HIS SHORT STORY
Suspense! - Why Doesn't Forced Run Count?
"Louis (Bobo) Newsom, 45 years old and paunchy, is serving a second term with the Philadelphia Athletics, one of the nine major league clubs whose roster Old Bobo has graced in the past.
Newsom lost 20 games for Connie Mack in 1945 but that was not strange for him. He lost 20 for the St. Louis Browns in 1934 and the following season they shipped him to Washington. He lost 20 for Detroit in 1941 and the next spring they sold him to Washington. After he lost 20 for the Athletics in 1945 and was not disposed of the following spring, he asked for his unconditional release and Mr. Mack granted his request. Where did Bobo go from there? Back to Washington.
He spent the next few seasons in the minor leagues, creating the usual number of incidents. This spring he announced he was ready to return to the majors, and who brought him back? Washington. It was the fifth time that he joined Washington. He didn't do much good there and so they let him drift back to Philadelphia.
Good old Bobo is an actor of parts, a radio commentator of proportions and an all-around orator. He recently informed his old friend, Schoolboy Rowe, that he planned to become a short story writer.
'I've got a peach of a plot all worked out for my first story and it's a lulu. Would you care to hear it?'
Rowe agreed to listen.
'Here's the plot,' said Bobo. 'There's three men on the sacks and the guy that's pitching has got a 3-0 count on the batter and the manager waves to the bullpen for a relief pitcher. The relief pitcher gets to the mound just as the other pitcher throws a fourth wide one, walking the batter, but the guy who was on third don't score.
'That's the plot. The big wallop is that he don't score.'
Schoolboy Rowe wanted to know why the runner who was forced in did not score.
'I'll tell you why,' said Bobo, ' and you can see it's a honey of a plot.
'When the relief pitcher arrives, the fellow that's forced in from third is just startin' to lumber home like all them guys lumber when they score a forced run. The relief pitcher hollers at him an' tells him how lucky he is being forced because otherwise, he couldn't score from third on a double if he had to run.
'That makes the big guy sore. He starts arguin' with the relief pitcher. They have it back 'an forth. Finally this guy lumbers over the plate an' him an' the relief pitcher is still hollerin' insults at each other. The relief pitcher walks over an' acts like he is going to swing on the base runner and he comes over with intentions of swingin' on the relief pitcher an' the pitcher laughs in his face an' tags him with the ball. The umpire calls him out and the relief pitcher strikes out the next two batters on six pitches an' wins the game. I'll make the score 7-6.'
If Bobo was disappointed that his plot failed to meet with enthusiastic approval, he gave no sign of his feelings, but went right on:
'I think it's a honey of a plot. It's got what those magazines want, action and suspense. It's got everything but love interest and maybe I'll get some love interest in. I'll work up something about a blonde. Maybe I'll pick a brunette, somebody like Miss Long Beach, or something like that because I got to stick with local places since this plot is laid in California.'
'What plot?' asked the Schoolboy.
'The plot like I told you,' patiently explained Bobo. 'The bases is loaded with nobody out-'
'I heard all that,' interrupted the Schoolboy, 'but why don't they score the forced run?'
'There you have it,' said Bobo. 'That's the plot. The big suspense. Why don't they score the run? In my story, I explain why they don't.'
Mr. Rowe was still much puzzled.
'It's this way,' explained Bobo. 'The relief pitcher gets to the box just as the fourth ball is being pitched and he starts riding the runner. In the meantime he takes the ball from the pitcher he's relieving. The wrangle with the base runner keeps going stronger and stronger. The runner is looking at the relief pitcher, hollering something at him, as he crosses the plate and he misses the plate by at least three inches. By some miracle, the umpire notices him miss the home plate and when he comes at the pitcher to exchange a few punches, the pitcher tags him with the ball and he's out on account of him not touching home plate.
'Any other player could have tagged him out but in my story it's the relief pitcher, who then blows three strikes past each of the next two batters. This pitcher's got more stuff than anybody else in baseball.'
'It sounds pretty corny to me,' commented the Schoolboy.
'That just proves what I've always said,' Bobo told him. 'Truth is stranger than fiction- for the story isn't fiction. It's something that happened in California, in the Pacific Coast League, and I ought to know because I was the relief pitcher.' "
-H.G. Salsinger, condensed from the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, October 1952)
"Commissioner K.M. Landis once heard that Bobo Newsom, now pitching again for Washington, was a horseplayer and called him into his office.
'I understand that you play the races.'
'Yes, I occasionally lay a few bucks on a hot tip,' admitted Bobo.
'That's very wrong,' said the Judge. 'Now supposing you had a bet on a horse, your team was one run behind going into the ninth inning, the bases were filled and you came to bat, what would you be thinking of, the ball game or how your horse came out?'
'Judge,' said Bobo, 'if my team was behind going into the ninth and the bases were filled, I'd never come to bat.'
The decision went to Bobo."
-H.G. Salsinger in the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
BOBO LEAVES 'EM LAUGHING
"There are two Bobo Newsom stories kicking around. The first is that the veteran hurler, just bounced by Washington for a fifth time, was standing around in front of a Boston hotel one night this spring offering to bet two rookies he could name the capital of every state in the Union. A veteran going by heard him and said, 'You should. You've played in every one of them.'
A Washington writer said that a while back when Bucky Harris was short of pitchers, he said he might have to start Newsom. A reporter decided to enlarge on the details, so he called Bobo's hotel room and asked when was the last time Bobo had started a major league game. 'It was in 1948,' said Bobo without a moment's hesitation, 'when I was with the New York Giants. Pitched the opener against the Boston Braves, held them to four hits and beat Johnny Sain, 1-0.' The reporter, knowing that Bobo is never one to bother with minor facts, checked his record books and found that Bobo's record was won none, lost one. He called Bobo and informed him what the record book said. 'That,' said Bobo, 'is not the way I remember it at all, but let it be, it's too late to change a mistake like that.' "
-Gerry Hern in the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, August 1952)
WAIT TIL' MRS. NEWSOM READS THIS
"Of course, there had to be something unusual about Bobo Newson's wedding. The ceremony was performed at 11:59 on New Year's Eve in 1943.
'My wife didn't want to be married in a leap year (1944),' the veteran hurler with the Philadelphia Athletics explained. 'And I delayed it as long as I could.' "
-Ed Pollack in the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
BOBO AND HIS SHORT STORY
Suspense! - Why Doesn't Forced Run Count?
"Louis (Bobo) Newsom, 45 years old and paunchy, is serving a second term with the Philadelphia Athletics, one of the nine major league clubs whose roster Old Bobo has graced in the past.
Newsom lost 20 games for Connie Mack in 1945 but that was not strange for him. He lost 20 for the St. Louis Browns in 1934 and the following season they shipped him to Washington. He lost 20 for Detroit in 1941 and the next spring they sold him to Washington. After he lost 20 for the Athletics in 1945 and was not disposed of the following spring, he asked for his unconditional release and Mr. Mack granted his request. Where did Bobo go from there? Back to Washington.
He spent the next few seasons in the minor leagues, creating the usual number of incidents. This spring he announced he was ready to return to the majors, and who brought him back? Washington. It was the fifth time that he joined Washington. He didn't do much good there and so they let him drift back to Philadelphia.
Good old Bobo is an actor of parts, a radio commentator of proportions and an all-around orator. He recently informed his old friend, Schoolboy Rowe, that he planned to become a short story writer.
'I've got a peach of a plot all worked out for my first story and it's a lulu. Would you care to hear it?'
Rowe agreed to listen.
'Here's the plot,' said Bobo. 'There's three men on the sacks and the guy that's pitching has got a 3-0 count on the batter and the manager waves to the bullpen for a relief pitcher. The relief pitcher gets to the mound just as the other pitcher throws a fourth wide one, walking the batter, but the guy who was on third don't score.
'That's the plot. The big wallop is that he don't score.'
Schoolboy Rowe wanted to know why the runner who was forced in did not score.
'I'll tell you why,' said Bobo, ' and you can see it's a honey of a plot.
'When the relief pitcher arrives, the fellow that's forced in from third is just startin' to lumber home like all them guys lumber when they score a forced run. The relief pitcher hollers at him an' tells him how lucky he is being forced because otherwise, he couldn't score from third on a double if he had to run.
'That makes the big guy sore. He starts arguin' with the relief pitcher. They have it back 'an forth. Finally this guy lumbers over the plate an' him an' the relief pitcher is still hollerin' insults at each other. The relief pitcher walks over an' acts like he is going to swing on the base runner and he comes over with intentions of swingin' on the relief pitcher an' the pitcher laughs in his face an' tags him with the ball. The umpire calls him out and the relief pitcher strikes out the next two batters on six pitches an' wins the game. I'll make the score 7-6.'
If Bobo was disappointed that his plot failed to meet with enthusiastic approval, he gave no sign of his feelings, but went right on:
'I think it's a honey of a plot. It's got what those magazines want, action and suspense. It's got everything but love interest and maybe I'll get some love interest in. I'll work up something about a blonde. Maybe I'll pick a brunette, somebody like Miss Long Beach, or something like that because I got to stick with local places since this plot is laid in California.'
'What plot?' asked the Schoolboy.
'The plot like I told you,' patiently explained Bobo. 'The bases is loaded with nobody out-'
'I heard all that,' interrupted the Schoolboy, 'but why don't they score the forced run?'
'There you have it,' said Bobo. 'That's the plot. The big suspense. Why don't they score the run? In my story, I explain why they don't.'
Mr. Rowe was still much puzzled.
'It's this way,' explained Bobo. 'The relief pitcher gets to the box just as the fourth ball is being pitched and he starts riding the runner. In the meantime he takes the ball from the pitcher he's relieving. The wrangle with the base runner keeps going stronger and stronger. The runner is looking at the relief pitcher, hollering something at him, as he crosses the plate and he misses the plate by at least three inches. By some miracle, the umpire notices him miss the home plate and when he comes at the pitcher to exchange a few punches, the pitcher tags him with the ball and he's out on account of him not touching home plate.
'Any other player could have tagged him out but in my story it's the relief pitcher, who then blows three strikes past each of the next two batters. This pitcher's got more stuff than anybody else in baseball.'
'It sounds pretty corny to me,' commented the Schoolboy.
'That just proves what I've always said,' Bobo told him. 'Truth is stranger than fiction- for the story isn't fiction. It's something that happened in California, in the Pacific Coast League, and I ought to know because I was the relief pitcher.' "
-H.G. Salsinger, condensed from the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, October 1952)
Friday, January 11, 2019
1952 Yankee of the Past: Eddie Plank (traded to Yankees but retired)
KING OF FIDGETS
One of the Greatest- The Story of Eddie Plank
"Connie Mack, the patriarch of baseball, handled many an unusual character in his time. Rube Waddell probably heads the list, but there were others, even down to recent years, who had a tendency to tuck vine leaves in their hair and go frolicking down the primrose path. Mack was able to handle them all and, more important, to understand them despite his own abstemious code of living.
One of Mack's first lessons in dealing with ball players who preferred something stronger than a milk diet came when he was managing Pittsburgh, back in the last century, and had a pitcher on his club named John Davis Foreman, who was called Brownie, probably because of his pixielike habits.
Foreman had been a winner for Mack in 1895, but even then Mack had trouble holding the reins on him. The next year, even as early as the spring training camp in Charleston, South Carolina, Mack realized that all was not going to be roses with Foreman. And there were other Pittsburgh players besides Brownie who thought more of their fun than their baseball, which was understandable enough in those days when salaries were small.
Eventually, Mack was forced to let Foreman go to Cincinnati, but before the 1896 season was up Connie himself realized that it was going to be his last year as Pittsburgh manager.
Being booted out of Pittsburgh proved a step up the ladder for Mack, for he came under the influence of Ban Johnson the next year, and when that rugged individual formed the American League in 1901, Connie was his choice to run the club in Philadelphia for the Shibe brothers. Just by way of proving Ban hadn't guessed wrong, Mack ran the club for half a century.
Mack had reason to remember Brownie Foreman in his first year at Philadelphia, for Brownie's brother Frank, who was baseball coach at Gettysburg College, made Connie a present of a pitcher- Edward Stewart Plank, who was to win more games than any other left-hander in the history of baseball.
Frank Foreman, who lived in Baltimore, was acquainted with Mack though the fact that Connie had his fun-loving brother on the club at Pittsburgh. Frank told Connie that he had two pitchers at Gettysburg that he thought could win in the newly formed American League, Eddie Plank and a boy named George Longfellow Winter. As a prognosticator, Foreman was 100 per cent correct. Connie took Plank and the Red Sox signed Winter and both were immediate winners in the American League, each winning 17 games the year he stepped out of college. Winter, who was to pick up the unusual nickname of Sassafras, lasted eight years while Plank was to stick for 17 seasons.
Plank is one of the few pitchers in baseball- Ted Lyons and Bob Feller are the others who come to mind at the moment- who never pitched an inning of minor league ball. And Eddie's 324 victories are tops for a left-handed pitcher. Mose Grove won 300 even, and the fact that twenty-one of Plank's victories were scored in the Federal League doesn't detract from his record. Whether Plank could have won his games with the lively ball as Grove did is something else again.
Incidentally, it is interesting that of the five left-handers in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, four started under Connie- Plank, Grove, Waddell and Herb Pennock. The only exception was Carl Hubbell, the New York Giants' meal ticket, unless you wish to count Babe Ruth, who was voted into the Hall on his batting prowess rather than for his left-handed pitching.
For all of Plank's indubitably great pitching, he is remembered in baseball history principally for the frustrations visited upon him. There is, for instance, the seventeen-inning tie game between Detroit and the Athletics, the tie which won the 1907 pennant for Hughie Jennings' Tigers. Ty Cobb, then a youngster of twenty-one, frequently has referred to it as the most exciting ball game in which he ever played. And Ty played in 3,033 games before he quit.
The Athletics seemed to have a safe lead over Detroit in mid-September of that season, particularly in view of the fact that the A's were at home and the Tigers had to make an Eastern swing. But Jack Coombs had injured his arm earlier and Chief Bender's arm went dead right when a game or two from the Chippewa would have been of great help. Plank had to carry the load, assisted by Jimmy Dygert, a young spitballer. Waddell could have been of some assistance but Rube was getting to be too much for Connie to handle.
When Detroit moved into Philadelphia on September 27, a Friday, the A's had the most fractional of leads over the Tigers, a percentage of .6058 to .6056. Behind George Mullin, Detroit beat the overworked Plank, 5-4. And four runs were usually enough for Eddie.
Columbia Park, where the A's played their games then, was sold out for the double-header next day, with Detroit now in first place by .608 to .601, but the heavens opened that Saturday and it was impossible to play. That meant a doubleheader on Monday, September 30, as there was no Sunday ball in Pennsylvania at that time. The stands, of course, were packed long before game time. And the fans probably saw more drama than any crowd of baseball fans has seen, before or since.
Mack needed the two games to get back into first place and his plans were for Dygert to pitch the opener, with Plank, his ace, for the clincher in the nightcap. Waddell showed up and Connie figured him as a relief pitcher for Dygert if the spitballer needed any help.
Wild Bill Donovan, who came to an untimely end in a train wreck in 1923, was Jennings' starter and the Athletics tore into him, building up a 7-1 lead by the end of five innings. Cobb maintains to this day that the only reason Hughie allowed Donovan to stay in was that Bill had grown up in Philadelphia and had many friends and relatives among the 30,000 jamming Columbia Park, its seats, it aisles and behind ropes on its playing field. Mack also believes that this was the only excuse Jennings had for allowing Wild Bill to stay in and take it- he didn't wish to humiliate him by taking him out.
Mack lifted Dygert in the second and put in Waddell because Jimmy had almost chased Claude Rossman over the plate in a play which could have been executed with a simple toss to the catcher. And then compounded the felony by walking Donovan, his pitching opponent. Rube came on and fanned Dave Jones and Germany Schaefer to end the inning.
Waddell wasn't himself that game, and when his support faltered in the seventh, Rube faltered right along with it, and the Tigers picked up four runs to whittle the Philadelphia lead to 7-5. The A's scored in their half but Detroit got one against Rube in the eighth and came into the ninth still needing two to tie.
Wahoo Sam Crawford opened fire on Waddell in the ninth with a single and Cobb came up and belted a home run over the right field fence to tie up the game. Mack immediately called on Plank, and Waddell was not only out of the game but virtually through as a member of the Athletics.
Cobb doubled in the overflow crowd to score Rossman in the eleventh inning, but the A's tied it up and their half when Donovan lived up to his nickname with an untimely wild pitch. And then Plank and Wild Bill battled each other until night fell.
In the fourteenth Harry Davis of the A's hit one into the crowd for an apparent ground-rule double. Crawford claimed that a Philadelphia policeman had interfered with him and, after a long wrangle, Umpire Silk O'Loughlin upheld the interference claim and called Davis out, causing Mack to fly into a snit. He was still seething years later whenever he recalled the play. Connie even invaded the umpires' dressing room after the game to tell Silk off, got affidavits from the policeman and spectators and forwarded them to Ban Johnson's office in protest but, of course, to no avail. To make the decision even more galling, Danny Murphy followed with a long single which would have scored Davis and won the game for Plank.
Eventually, the game was called after seventeen innings and almost four hours of play, a 9-9 tie. The Tigers left Philadelphia in first place and stayed there for the rest of the season.
Plank is tied with Rube Marquard, Bullet Joe Bush and Schoolboy Rowe for the distinction of having lost the most World Series decisions, five. Yet Gettysburg Eddie pitched almost uniformly good baseball in the World Series. Of his five defeats, four were by shutouts and the other was a 4-3 defeat in ten innings! The two World Series games Plank won also were low-score affairs, both being decided by 3-1 margins. In one World Series, that of 1910 against the Cubs, Mack didn't start Plank at all, using Bender and Coombs as starters in all five games.
When Plank was a student at Gettysburg, he often hooked up with Christy Mathewson when the latter was pitching at near-by Bucknell. But Eddie never once got the duke over Matty. And in the first World Series game in which either ever pitched, in 1905, 'Gum Boots' beat Plank, 3-0. Eddie was to lose again in the all-shutout World Series with the Giants, by 1-0, to Iron Man Joe McGinnity, the New York tally coming on errors by Monte and Lave Cross. Eddie could have said he was double-crossed but he probably was in no mood for puns.
Plank got no chance in the 1910 Series, nor did his jinx, but Eddie finally came through with a victory in 1911 when the A's got him three runs. He beat Rube Marquard, 3-1, the winning margin being provided by Frank Baker's home run with Eddie Collins on base. Plank had a total of eight strikeouts in the game, getting Josh Devore, the Giant leadoff hitter, four times.
If Eddie thought his World Series jinx had departed, however, he had another think coming. Summoned to the relief of Coombs in the fifth game of the Series, Plank pitched exactly two-thirds of an inning in the tenth and lost the ball game.
The teams were tied, 3-3, when Plank took over at the Polo Grounds. Laughing Larry Doyle, who had made three hits against Coombs, opened fire on Eddie and took third on a bunt by Fred Snodgrass, on which Plank made a late play, so both runners were safe. Red John Murray went out and then Fred Merkle lashed a long fly down the right field line. Danny Murphy took the ball just in fair territory and Doyle came home from third just ahead of his throw. It was claimed by many that Larry missed the plate with his slide, but neither Jack Lapp, the catcher, nor any of the other Athletics made any attempt to tag him. Bill Klem, umpiring behind the plate, declared that night that had any of the A's tagged Doyle he would have called him out.
In effect, this was the same as a shutout for Plank, even though he was pitching in relief, for the score was tied and the first run scored against him was enough to beat him [sic].
Two years later Plank faced the Giants again in a World Series game and once more he drew his old Bucknell opponent, Matty. In this game, played in Philly, Plank must have surely thought he had his jinx whipped, for, with the teams in a scoreless deadlock, the A's got men on second and third with none out in the last of the ninth. Hooks Wiltse, a converted pitcher playing first, made two great plays to throw runners out at the plate and Matty forced the third batter to hit back to the box.
When that golden opportunity floated away, the ball game floated with it, for Plank was tagged for three runs by the Giants in the top of the tenth and was beaten, 3-0.
Plank had now allowed a total of nine runs in five World Series appearances and lost four games! Only once had the A's scored when Eddie was on the mound and he won that one, 3-1. He couldn't be blamed if he felt he just wasn't meant to win a Series game, particularly against the Giants.
In the fifth game of the 1913 Series, Plank again tangled with Matty, this time at the Polo Grounds. For once the White Elephants got Eddie some runs and got them early, giving him a 3-0 lead at the end of three innings. Plank was pitching a perfect game and retired the first thirteen Giants in order. Tilly Shafer drew a pass from Plank with one out in the fifth. On the hit-and-run, Murray popped a dainty fly behind the pitcher's box. Tilly had reached second as Eddie settled under the pop-up and seemed a cinch to be doubled but Baker, also trying for the catch, bumped Plank and the ball fell to the ground, causing Eddie to be charged with an error and leaving Giants on first and second. Larry McLean singled home Shafer with the only run the Giants were to get.
In the sixth, Matty also singled and then was caught in a double play. And Plank retired the Giants in order thereafter. He faced only twenty-nine men all afternoon, walking one and allowing two singles.
Eddie should have felt pretty chesty about that victory, for it was the last time his ancient rival Mathewson was to be in a World Series and, in pitching the game that gave the A's the title, Plank had some measure of revenge for having been beaten four times by the Giants.
Just as a footnote, it must be reported that our hero was by no means through with his World Series vicissitudes. In 1914, against the miracle Boston Braves of George Stallings, Plank tangled with Bill James in the second game and was beaten by a score of 1-0 when Charley Deal and Les Mann hit blooping pop flies which fell safely for base hits in the ninth inning.
Baseball writers of Plank's era used to complain that Eddie 'had no sense of humor.' Considering all that happened to him that was understandable. While he was a big winner in regular-season competition, he had no luck at all in World Series play. Eight different years Eddie won twenty games or better.
Tall and somber-looking, the lean Plank was a serious individual when he pitched. He was one of the great time-consumers of his era. Eddie would hitch at his cap, jerk at his belt, inch his foot forward and then pull it back by degrees. Even when he did go into his rocking motion, the batter never was sure when he was going to get the ball.
Among latter-day pitchers, Tom Zachary, the left-hander, and Ray Benge, who managed to hang around the National League for eleven years, were the only ones on a par with Plank for fidgeting in the pitcher's box before delivering the ball.
There was a method in their fidgets and, if Plank didn't invent this style of delayed pitching, he was one of its early protagonists, along with a pitcher whom the New York Highlanders had in the early years of the century, Slow Joe Doyle.
'Plank would stand out on the mound so long that your eyes would actually water between pitches,' recalled one of his contemporaries. 'He was the first pitcher I ever saw against whom batters would call time and step out of the box, a practice which was not common in his time.'
Plank's fidgets were designed, of course, to get the batter off stride. As Eddie rocked back and forth on the mound, the hitter never knew when the ball was going to be delivered. That it was effective was shown by Plank's great record and by his durability. Eddie pitched seventeen years, all in the major leagues, and was approaching his twenty-sixth birthday when he came out of Gettysburg College to report to Mack.
After Stallings' Braves swept the Series in 1914, Mack was forced to tear up his great Athletic team. At the end of the season, he surprisingly made free agents of Plank, Bender and Coombs, three of his greatest pitchers. Bender signed with Baltimore in the Federal League and Coombs was picked up by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Gettysburg Eddie signed with the St. Louis Feds, managed by Fielder Jones. This club, which had finished last in 1914, was a surprising second in 1915, thanks to the fact that Plank, then forty, won twenty-one games. When peace was declared between the majors and the outlaw Federals, Plank went to the St. Louis Browns where he had a 16-15 season in 1916. The next year he won five and lost six, only the second time in his career that he finished below .500.
For all of Plank's effectiveness in the Federal League, his slow type of pitching was not well received. Fred J. Bendel, veteran baseball writer of the Newark, N.J., News, who covered Eddie's two-hit victory in 1913, declares Plank actually had a bad effect on the gate when he was scheduled to pitch in Newark.
'No commuter would come out to see the St. Louis Feds play if they thought Plank was going to pitch,' says Bendel, 'because they knew they would all miss their regular trains home.' "
-Tom Meaney, from the book "Baseball's Greatest Pitchers" (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
One of the Greatest- The Story of Eddie Plank
"Connie Mack, the patriarch of baseball, handled many an unusual character in his time. Rube Waddell probably heads the list, but there were others, even down to recent years, who had a tendency to tuck vine leaves in their hair and go frolicking down the primrose path. Mack was able to handle them all and, more important, to understand them despite his own abstemious code of living.
One of Mack's first lessons in dealing with ball players who preferred something stronger than a milk diet came when he was managing Pittsburgh, back in the last century, and had a pitcher on his club named John Davis Foreman, who was called Brownie, probably because of his pixielike habits.
Foreman had been a winner for Mack in 1895, but even then Mack had trouble holding the reins on him. The next year, even as early as the spring training camp in Charleston, South Carolina, Mack realized that all was not going to be roses with Foreman. And there were other Pittsburgh players besides Brownie who thought more of their fun than their baseball, which was understandable enough in those days when salaries were small.
Eventually, Mack was forced to let Foreman go to Cincinnati, but before the 1896 season was up Connie himself realized that it was going to be his last year as Pittsburgh manager.
Being booted out of Pittsburgh proved a step up the ladder for Mack, for he came under the influence of Ban Johnson the next year, and when that rugged individual formed the American League in 1901, Connie was his choice to run the club in Philadelphia for the Shibe brothers. Just by way of proving Ban hadn't guessed wrong, Mack ran the club for half a century.
Mack had reason to remember Brownie Foreman in his first year at Philadelphia, for Brownie's brother Frank, who was baseball coach at Gettysburg College, made Connie a present of a pitcher- Edward Stewart Plank, who was to win more games than any other left-hander in the history of baseball.
Frank Foreman, who lived in Baltimore, was acquainted with Mack though the fact that Connie had his fun-loving brother on the club at Pittsburgh. Frank told Connie that he had two pitchers at Gettysburg that he thought could win in the newly formed American League, Eddie Plank and a boy named George Longfellow Winter. As a prognosticator, Foreman was 100 per cent correct. Connie took Plank and the Red Sox signed Winter and both were immediate winners in the American League, each winning 17 games the year he stepped out of college. Winter, who was to pick up the unusual nickname of Sassafras, lasted eight years while Plank was to stick for 17 seasons.
Plank is one of the few pitchers in baseball- Ted Lyons and Bob Feller are the others who come to mind at the moment- who never pitched an inning of minor league ball. And Eddie's 324 victories are tops for a left-handed pitcher. Mose Grove won 300 even, and the fact that twenty-one of Plank's victories were scored in the Federal League doesn't detract from his record. Whether Plank could have won his games with the lively ball as Grove did is something else again.
Incidentally, it is interesting that of the five left-handers in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, four started under Connie- Plank, Grove, Waddell and Herb Pennock. The only exception was Carl Hubbell, the New York Giants' meal ticket, unless you wish to count Babe Ruth, who was voted into the Hall on his batting prowess rather than for his left-handed pitching.
For all of Plank's indubitably great pitching, he is remembered in baseball history principally for the frustrations visited upon him. There is, for instance, the seventeen-inning tie game between Detroit and the Athletics, the tie which won the 1907 pennant for Hughie Jennings' Tigers. Ty Cobb, then a youngster of twenty-one, frequently has referred to it as the most exciting ball game in which he ever played. And Ty played in 3,033 games before he quit.
The Athletics seemed to have a safe lead over Detroit in mid-September of that season, particularly in view of the fact that the A's were at home and the Tigers had to make an Eastern swing. But Jack Coombs had injured his arm earlier and Chief Bender's arm went dead right when a game or two from the Chippewa would have been of great help. Plank had to carry the load, assisted by Jimmy Dygert, a young spitballer. Waddell could have been of some assistance but Rube was getting to be too much for Connie to handle.
When Detroit moved into Philadelphia on September 27, a Friday, the A's had the most fractional of leads over the Tigers, a percentage of .6058 to .6056. Behind George Mullin, Detroit beat the overworked Plank, 5-4. And four runs were usually enough for Eddie.
Columbia Park, where the A's played their games then, was sold out for the double-header next day, with Detroit now in first place by .608 to .601, but the heavens opened that Saturday and it was impossible to play. That meant a doubleheader on Monday, September 30, as there was no Sunday ball in Pennsylvania at that time. The stands, of course, were packed long before game time. And the fans probably saw more drama than any crowd of baseball fans has seen, before or since.
Mack needed the two games to get back into first place and his plans were for Dygert to pitch the opener, with Plank, his ace, for the clincher in the nightcap. Waddell showed up and Connie figured him as a relief pitcher for Dygert if the spitballer needed any help.
Wild Bill Donovan, who came to an untimely end in a train wreck in 1923, was Jennings' starter and the Athletics tore into him, building up a 7-1 lead by the end of five innings. Cobb maintains to this day that the only reason Hughie allowed Donovan to stay in was that Bill had grown up in Philadelphia and had many friends and relatives among the 30,000 jamming Columbia Park, its seats, it aisles and behind ropes on its playing field. Mack also believes that this was the only excuse Jennings had for allowing Wild Bill to stay in and take it- he didn't wish to humiliate him by taking him out.
Mack lifted Dygert in the second and put in Waddell because Jimmy had almost chased Claude Rossman over the plate in a play which could have been executed with a simple toss to the catcher. And then compounded the felony by walking Donovan, his pitching opponent. Rube came on and fanned Dave Jones and Germany Schaefer to end the inning.
Waddell wasn't himself that game, and when his support faltered in the seventh, Rube faltered right along with it, and the Tigers picked up four runs to whittle the Philadelphia lead to 7-5. The A's scored in their half but Detroit got one against Rube in the eighth and came into the ninth still needing two to tie.
Wahoo Sam Crawford opened fire on Waddell in the ninth with a single and Cobb came up and belted a home run over the right field fence to tie up the game. Mack immediately called on Plank, and Waddell was not only out of the game but virtually through as a member of the Athletics.
Cobb doubled in the overflow crowd to score Rossman in the eleventh inning, but the A's tied it up and their half when Donovan lived up to his nickname with an untimely wild pitch. And then Plank and Wild Bill battled each other until night fell.
In the fourteenth Harry Davis of the A's hit one into the crowd for an apparent ground-rule double. Crawford claimed that a Philadelphia policeman had interfered with him and, after a long wrangle, Umpire Silk O'Loughlin upheld the interference claim and called Davis out, causing Mack to fly into a snit. He was still seething years later whenever he recalled the play. Connie even invaded the umpires' dressing room after the game to tell Silk off, got affidavits from the policeman and spectators and forwarded them to Ban Johnson's office in protest but, of course, to no avail. To make the decision even more galling, Danny Murphy followed with a long single which would have scored Davis and won the game for Plank.
Eventually, the game was called after seventeen innings and almost four hours of play, a 9-9 tie. The Tigers left Philadelphia in first place and stayed there for the rest of the season.
Plank is tied with Rube Marquard, Bullet Joe Bush and Schoolboy Rowe for the distinction of having lost the most World Series decisions, five. Yet Gettysburg Eddie pitched almost uniformly good baseball in the World Series. Of his five defeats, four were by shutouts and the other was a 4-3 defeat in ten innings! The two World Series games Plank won also were low-score affairs, both being decided by 3-1 margins. In one World Series, that of 1910 against the Cubs, Mack didn't start Plank at all, using Bender and Coombs as starters in all five games.
When Plank was a student at Gettysburg, he often hooked up with Christy Mathewson when the latter was pitching at near-by Bucknell. But Eddie never once got the duke over Matty. And in the first World Series game in which either ever pitched, in 1905, 'Gum Boots' beat Plank, 3-0. Eddie was to lose again in the all-shutout World Series with the Giants, by 1-0, to Iron Man Joe McGinnity, the New York tally coming on errors by Monte and Lave Cross. Eddie could have said he was double-crossed but he probably was in no mood for puns.
Plank got no chance in the 1910 Series, nor did his jinx, but Eddie finally came through with a victory in 1911 when the A's got him three runs. He beat Rube Marquard, 3-1, the winning margin being provided by Frank Baker's home run with Eddie Collins on base. Plank had a total of eight strikeouts in the game, getting Josh Devore, the Giant leadoff hitter, four times.
If Eddie thought his World Series jinx had departed, however, he had another think coming. Summoned to the relief of Coombs in the fifth game of the Series, Plank pitched exactly two-thirds of an inning in the tenth and lost the ball game.
The teams were tied, 3-3, when Plank took over at the Polo Grounds. Laughing Larry Doyle, who had made three hits against Coombs, opened fire on Eddie and took third on a bunt by Fred Snodgrass, on which Plank made a late play, so both runners were safe. Red John Murray went out and then Fred Merkle lashed a long fly down the right field line. Danny Murphy took the ball just in fair territory and Doyle came home from third just ahead of his throw. It was claimed by many that Larry missed the plate with his slide, but neither Jack Lapp, the catcher, nor any of the other Athletics made any attempt to tag him. Bill Klem, umpiring behind the plate, declared that night that had any of the A's tagged Doyle he would have called him out.
In effect, this was the same as a shutout for Plank, even though he was pitching in relief, for the score was tied and the first run scored against him was enough to beat him [sic].
Two years later Plank faced the Giants again in a World Series game and once more he drew his old Bucknell opponent, Matty. In this game, played in Philly, Plank must have surely thought he had his jinx whipped, for, with the teams in a scoreless deadlock, the A's got men on second and third with none out in the last of the ninth. Hooks Wiltse, a converted pitcher playing first, made two great plays to throw runners out at the plate and Matty forced the third batter to hit back to the box.
When that golden opportunity floated away, the ball game floated with it, for Plank was tagged for three runs by the Giants in the top of the tenth and was beaten, 3-0.
Plank had now allowed a total of nine runs in five World Series appearances and lost four games! Only once had the A's scored when Eddie was on the mound and he won that one, 3-1. He couldn't be blamed if he felt he just wasn't meant to win a Series game, particularly against the Giants.
In the fifth game of the 1913 Series, Plank again tangled with Matty, this time at the Polo Grounds. For once the White Elephants got Eddie some runs and got them early, giving him a 3-0 lead at the end of three innings. Plank was pitching a perfect game and retired the first thirteen Giants in order. Tilly Shafer drew a pass from Plank with one out in the fifth. On the hit-and-run, Murray popped a dainty fly behind the pitcher's box. Tilly had reached second as Eddie settled under the pop-up and seemed a cinch to be doubled but Baker, also trying for the catch, bumped Plank and the ball fell to the ground, causing Eddie to be charged with an error and leaving Giants on first and second. Larry McLean singled home Shafer with the only run the Giants were to get.
In the sixth, Matty also singled and then was caught in a double play. And Plank retired the Giants in order thereafter. He faced only twenty-nine men all afternoon, walking one and allowing two singles.
Eddie should have felt pretty chesty about that victory, for it was the last time his ancient rival Mathewson was to be in a World Series and, in pitching the game that gave the A's the title, Plank had some measure of revenge for having been beaten four times by the Giants.
Just as a footnote, it must be reported that our hero was by no means through with his World Series vicissitudes. In 1914, against the miracle Boston Braves of George Stallings, Plank tangled with Bill James in the second game and was beaten by a score of 1-0 when Charley Deal and Les Mann hit blooping pop flies which fell safely for base hits in the ninth inning.
Baseball writers of Plank's era used to complain that Eddie 'had no sense of humor.' Considering all that happened to him that was understandable. While he was a big winner in regular-season competition, he had no luck at all in World Series play. Eight different years Eddie won twenty games or better.
Tall and somber-looking, the lean Plank was a serious individual when he pitched. He was one of the great time-consumers of his era. Eddie would hitch at his cap, jerk at his belt, inch his foot forward and then pull it back by degrees. Even when he did go into his rocking motion, the batter never was sure when he was going to get the ball.
Among latter-day pitchers, Tom Zachary, the left-hander, and Ray Benge, who managed to hang around the National League for eleven years, were the only ones on a par with Plank for fidgeting in the pitcher's box before delivering the ball.
There was a method in their fidgets and, if Plank didn't invent this style of delayed pitching, he was one of its early protagonists, along with a pitcher whom the New York Highlanders had in the early years of the century, Slow Joe Doyle.
'Plank would stand out on the mound so long that your eyes would actually water between pitches,' recalled one of his contemporaries. 'He was the first pitcher I ever saw against whom batters would call time and step out of the box, a practice which was not common in his time.'
Plank's fidgets were designed, of course, to get the batter off stride. As Eddie rocked back and forth on the mound, the hitter never knew when the ball was going to be delivered. That it was effective was shown by Plank's great record and by his durability. Eddie pitched seventeen years, all in the major leagues, and was approaching his twenty-sixth birthday when he came out of Gettysburg College to report to Mack.
After Stallings' Braves swept the Series in 1914, Mack was forced to tear up his great Athletic team. At the end of the season, he surprisingly made free agents of Plank, Bender and Coombs, three of his greatest pitchers. Bender signed with Baltimore in the Federal League and Coombs was picked up by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Gettysburg Eddie signed with the St. Louis Feds, managed by Fielder Jones. This club, which had finished last in 1914, was a surprising second in 1915, thanks to the fact that Plank, then forty, won twenty-one games. When peace was declared between the majors and the outlaw Federals, Plank went to the St. Louis Browns where he had a 16-15 season in 1916. The next year he won five and lost six, only the second time in his career that he finished below .500.
For all of Plank's effectiveness in the Federal League, his slow type of pitching was not well received. Fred J. Bendel, veteran baseball writer of the Newark, N.J., News, who covered Eddie's two-hit victory in 1913, declares Plank actually had a bad effect on the gate when he was scheduled to pitch in Newark.
'No commuter would come out to see the St. Louis Feds play if they thought Plank was going to pitch,' says Bendel, 'because they knew they would all miss their regular trains home.' "
-Tom Meaney, from the book "Baseball's Greatest Pitchers" (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
Friday, December 21, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Hank Severeid
GOLDEN HOMER
"Hank Severeid, work-horse catcher for the St. Louis Browns from 1915 to 1925, recalls this as one of the big thrills of his baseball career:
'One day when Branch Rickey was manager of the Browns we were playing the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox held the lead in the last half of the ninth, 3-0. The Browns had three runners on the bases.
'When I stepped to the plate Rickey flashed the signal to hit the first ball pitched. I swung, and the ball happened to go up in the left field bleachers. How it happened I don't know, but it did. That blow I always remembered because it happened on a Saturday. Robert Lee Hedges, who owned the Browns, called me to the grandstand and said, 'Hank, come up to the office Monday morning. I want to give you a little present. The hit you made to win the ball game will increase my crowd tomorrow (Sunday) by at least 4,000.'
'I went up to the office expecting possibly a suit of clothes or a ten dollar bill. When I reached the office Mr. Hedges said, 'Hank, I got the ball that you hit over the fence, had it painted a gold color with my name on it, and I am presenting it to you.' "
-Willis Johnson in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
"Hank Severeid, work-horse catcher for the St. Louis Browns from 1915 to 1925, recalls this as one of the big thrills of his baseball career:
'One day when Branch Rickey was manager of the Browns we were playing the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox held the lead in the last half of the ninth, 3-0. The Browns had three runners on the bases.
'When I stepped to the plate Rickey flashed the signal to hit the first ball pitched. I swung, and the ball happened to go up in the left field bleachers. How it happened I don't know, but it did. That blow I always remembered because it happened on a Saturday. Robert Lee Hedges, who owned the Browns, called me to the grandstand and said, 'Hank, come up to the office Monday morning. I want to give you a little present. The hit you made to win the ball game will increase my crowd tomorrow (Sunday) by at least 4,000.'
'I went up to the office expecting possibly a suit of clothes or a ten dollar bill. When I reached the office Mr. Hedges said, 'Hank, I got the ball that you hit over the fence, had it painted a gold color with my name on it, and I am presenting it to you.' "
-Willis Johnson in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Gus Niarhos
"This is Gus' first campaign with the Red Sox. Last season he was with the Pale Hose of Chicago and was in 66 games, batting .256.
Gus had his best average in 1950 (divided between the Yanks and White Sox) when he hit .324 in 42 games. He began in baseball with Akron in 1941."
-1952 Bowman No. 129
"During the winter, Gus was traded by the White Sox to the Browns who traded him to the Red Sox.
A good receiver, he was with the Yankees for part of the 1946 season and was recalled in 1948 after hitting .321 at Kansas City in '47. Used sparingly in '48, '49 and '50, he was sent to the White Sox in 1950 and hit .324 in 105 at-bats.
Gus is called 'Greek' by his teammates. He served in the armed forces for three years and attended Auburn University for one year."
-1952 Topps No. 121
MCGREW'S BOY: NIARHOS
Red Sox Scout Spotted Him for Bucs
"'There, gentlemen, is the best catcher in baseball.' The man making that positive statement was Ted McGrew, chief scout of the Boston Red Sox, who bears the reputation, gained after many years at the job, of being as good as there is. The ball player he was boasting about was Gus Niarhos.
There had been much discussion over the winter as to what the Red Sox were to do for catching this year. Sure, they had acquired Niarhos by trade from St. Louis, whither he had just been traded by Chicago. Not too much was known about Gus, except that he seemed like a little fellow and that Chicago had got rid of him because he appeared to be brittle.
McGrew's daring statement thus became interesting. Ted Williams' declaration a few weeks before that the Red Sox made their best deal in years when they had got Niarhos was remembered. So, McGrew was pumped for his thoughts about Gus.
'I made up my mind about Gus back in 1947 when he was with Kansas City,' McGrew said. 'I didn't care that he was having a big year (Niarhos caught in 87 games that year, batted .321 and was almost perfect in fielding, with .995). It was the way he caught that appealed to me. He was sure all the time, called for the correct pitches, was like a cat, and though he doesn't break down any fences in hitting, he is far from a pushover at bat.
'I was scouting for Pittsburgh and Frank McKinney then. Larry MacPhail, then boss of the New York Yankees, was a close friend of McKinney's and told him we could have a pitcher and catcher in the spring of 1948. McKinney sent me to the Yankee camp. They had seven catchers. I thought Niarhos was the best of them all, but the Yanks didn't agree with me, which was all right.
'We now had a chance to get Niarhos. The deal was ready to be closed until MacPhail got into an argument with McKinney one night and a close friendship came to an end. MacPhail then wouldn't sell us a batboy.
'I've talked about Niarhos since. When I first joined the Red Sox I told Joe Cronin what I thought, but Gus was going good for Chicago and we couldn't get him. But Joe remembered, kept on his trail, and finally got him. When that deal was made last fall, Joe phoned me and said, 'We finally got your boy.' '
Bill Wight and Randy Gumpert pitched to Niarhos at Kansas City with the Yanks, and then with the White Sox, and they agree with McGrew when pressed on the subject. 'Pitchers love to have him do their catching,' was their summation on Gus.
'I don't see how anybody could see me as brittle,' Niarhos says. 'All catchers are bound to get hurt, but I've only had a little of it. I caught in nearly ninety games for the Yanks in 1948 (it was eighty-three games) when Yogi Berra was playing the outfield and didn't get hurt until the end of the season when Vern Stephens fouled one off at Fenway Park which broke a bone in my hand- not a finger.
'I didn't get hurt again until last summer. A foul tip caught me on the palm back of the little finger in the third inning. I finished the game. The hand was sore, but that wasn't anything unusual. The next morning I knew something was wrong. Sure enough, there was another broken bone. I took the cast off the hand before I should have and started catching. That was the mistake.
'The White Sox had started to slip and I couldn't help them with my bad hand. That's just the way things go. Maybe it was all for the best.' "
-Jack Malaney, condensed from the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
Gus had his best average in 1950 (divided between the Yanks and White Sox) when he hit .324 in 42 games. He began in baseball with Akron in 1941."
-1952 Bowman No. 129
"During the winter, Gus was traded by the White Sox to the Browns who traded him to the Red Sox.
A good receiver, he was with the Yankees for part of the 1946 season and was recalled in 1948 after hitting .321 at Kansas City in '47. Used sparingly in '48, '49 and '50, he was sent to the White Sox in 1950 and hit .324 in 105 at-bats.
Gus is called 'Greek' by his teammates. He served in the armed forces for three years and attended Auburn University for one year."
-1952 Topps No. 121
MCGREW'S BOY: NIARHOS
Red Sox Scout Spotted Him for Bucs
"'There, gentlemen, is the best catcher in baseball.' The man making that positive statement was Ted McGrew, chief scout of the Boston Red Sox, who bears the reputation, gained after many years at the job, of being as good as there is. The ball player he was boasting about was Gus Niarhos.
There had been much discussion over the winter as to what the Red Sox were to do for catching this year. Sure, they had acquired Niarhos by trade from St. Louis, whither he had just been traded by Chicago. Not too much was known about Gus, except that he seemed like a little fellow and that Chicago had got rid of him because he appeared to be brittle.
McGrew's daring statement thus became interesting. Ted Williams' declaration a few weeks before that the Red Sox made their best deal in years when they had got Niarhos was remembered. So, McGrew was pumped for his thoughts about Gus.
'I made up my mind about Gus back in 1947 when he was with Kansas City,' McGrew said. 'I didn't care that he was having a big year (Niarhos caught in 87 games that year, batted .321 and was almost perfect in fielding, with .995). It was the way he caught that appealed to me. He was sure all the time, called for the correct pitches, was like a cat, and though he doesn't break down any fences in hitting, he is far from a pushover at bat.
'I was scouting for Pittsburgh and Frank McKinney then. Larry MacPhail, then boss of the New York Yankees, was a close friend of McKinney's and told him we could have a pitcher and catcher in the spring of 1948. McKinney sent me to the Yankee camp. They had seven catchers. I thought Niarhos was the best of them all, but the Yanks didn't agree with me, which was all right.
'We now had a chance to get Niarhos. The deal was ready to be closed until MacPhail got into an argument with McKinney one night and a close friendship came to an end. MacPhail then wouldn't sell us a batboy.
'I've talked about Niarhos since. When I first joined the Red Sox I told Joe Cronin what I thought, but Gus was going good for Chicago and we couldn't get him. But Joe remembered, kept on his trail, and finally got him. When that deal was made last fall, Joe phoned me and said, 'We finally got your boy.' '
Bill Wight and Randy Gumpert pitched to Niarhos at Kansas City with the Yanks, and then with the White Sox, and they agree with McGrew when pressed on the subject. 'Pitchers love to have him do their catching,' was their summation on Gus.
'I don't see how anybody could see me as brittle,' Niarhos says. 'All catchers are bound to get hurt, but I've only had a little of it. I caught in nearly ninety games for the Yanks in 1948 (it was eighty-three games) when Yogi Berra was playing the outfield and didn't get hurt until the end of the season when Vern Stephens fouled one off at Fenway Park which broke a bone in my hand- not a finger.
'I didn't get hurt again until last summer. A foul tip caught me on the palm back of the little finger in the third inning. I finished the game. The hand was sore, but that wasn't anything unusual. The next morning I knew something was wrong. Sure enough, there was another broken bone. I took the cast off the hand before I should have and started catching. That was the mistake.
'The White Sox had started to slip and I couldn't help them with my bad hand. That's just the way things go. Maybe it was all for the best.' "
-Jack Malaney, condensed from the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
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