What constitutes a “baseball name”? I still haven’t pinned it down. It’s more than just what a player has on their driver’s license; a good baseball name has snap, verve, intrigue, a special something that catches the eye or pleases the ear.

My go-to resource for baseball names is the downloadable dataset at Baseball Reference, a file containing biographical information on every major-league player in history and many minor-leaguers as well. The list encompasses all major leagues, not just the two that comprise Major League Baseball today. The recognized Negro Leagues are represented, as are the old American Association and the upstart Federal League. With a list of tens of thousands of players spanning 150 years, you can find nearly the breadth of human diversity in the list of baseball names. Anything, really—except women.

The most famous women’s professional baseball league, the mid-century All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is not recognized as a “major league.” Neither are the shorter-lived American Women’s Baseball League or Ladies League Baseball or the Women’s Adult National Baseball Association. Thousands of women pitching overhand from 60 feet, running 85-to-90-foot basepaths, using wooden bats, but none of them have made the list. This summer, a new professional women’s league is trying to force their way onto the pages of baseball history.

The Women’s Pro Baseball League consists of four teams, nominally aligned with four American cities, playing several dozen games out of Robin Roberts Stadium, the WPBL’s rented base of operations, in Springfield, Illinois. On Saturday, my family and I made the trip to see a game between the Boston Hunters and the Los Angeles Queens.

The Queens won, 10-6, but it never felt that close. Los Angeles batted around in the top of the first, punishing the Hunters’ early defensive mistakes. Boston made two errors and starting pitcher Alli Schroder issued three walks in stifling conditions (Springfield was still above 85 degrees after sunset). Los Angeles scored six runs before Boston made an out, and when the inning ended the score was 8-0 and Schroder was pulled with 50 pitches. Both teams contributed to a hitting exhibition that night, spraying balls all over the park and moving aggressively on the bases without being reckless. Several players shined, and everyone looked like they belonged.

The WPBL has offense figured out. It is overly simplistic to say that batting is the same in softball as it is in baseball, but it’s clearly close enough, and there is a deep pool of women who can hit. On pitching and defense, however, there is work to be done. The larger dimensions of a baseball field demand instant reactions from defenders, and on many occasions the outfielders seemed just a step or two behind the balls dropping in for hits. And the pitchers who have made it this far have come essentially on their own. The professional development pipeline for women baseball pitchers in the United States—as distinct from softball pitchers—is practically nonexistent. A significant number of Japanese pitchers and others from around the world are filling in the ranks, but as the WPBL inaugural season ends, of the 11 pitchers with more than 15 innings pitched, only one has an ERA under 3.50. More on her in a moment, but in general the WPBL has an arm problem.

As a dabbler in baseball history, I was struck by how much the WPBL game I watched had in common with early baseball in the late 1800s, when the pitchers didn’t throw as hard, defensive miscues were much more common and high-scoring games were common. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Those men were professional players only a few months every year, playing without the benefit of decades of development and specialization that future players would have. The first professional baseball players had to play their way into excellence. Well over 100 years later, the WPBL players have done the hardest part. They’ve started something great—which might one day be excellent—and given us a whole new set of “baseball names” that already are.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Boston Hunters

Boston has the best uniforms in the league and it’s not close. Big 1990s energy and look at this alternate logo:

Read more

This Week’s Lineup:

- Why they sell a Cubs-themed parrot at Wrigley Field

- Broadcast shenanigans in Houston

- Recapping Pope Hat Night and tipping our mitres to the supreme homer

- Brand-new old gloves

- Travis Bazzana brings cricket into baseball—succeeds

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Subscribe now

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Apple Podcasts Spotify RSS

Give a Rating, Like, or Restack

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Warning: If a comment is particularly enlightening and/or funny, we might read it during a future episode.

On Social Media

Paul: Substack Instagram Facebook

Ted: Substack

Original Research and Writing: Paul Jackson

Production and Music: Ted Walker

Design: Ketaki Kulkarni

Welcome to Project 3.18, where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.

If you enjoy what you read today, please subscribe to receive our free feature stories in your inbox. And if you’ve been here for a while, we could really use your support as a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers receive access to exclusive content and help keep this publication going and growing.

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In 1880, New York’s Polo Grounds hosted its first professional baseball team, the Metropolitans. In 1963, the New York Mets—no relation—were closing the place down.

In September, the Giants, the old ballpark’s former tenants, kicked off the final homestand, followed by the Houston Colt 45s and the Philadelphia Phillies, who would help turn out the lights on September 18. Throughout these final home games, the Mets kept busy trying to distract from the team’s 47-97 record.

On September 10, the team held a fan contest to determine the “most valuable Met1,” a title obviously awarded on a curve. The winner would receive something called an “Amphicar,” described as “an auto which operates on both land and water”…and we just had to follow up on this:

Next the team honored Duke Snider, the 36-year-old former Dodger who was raging against the dying light of his storied Brooklyn/Los Angeles career in altogether different circumstances. At one point that season Snider had admitted he was having a hard time playing for a team that was eternally five runs behind. “I realize this isn’t the proper attitude to have, but that’s the way I feel. At my age, it’s not easy to generate enthusiasm over lost causes.”

On September 12, the Mets feted him anyway, bringing back nearly all of his retired Brooklyn teammates (plus a telegram from Pee Wee Reese: “Never thought I’d live to see the day when they have a night for you in the Polo Grounds.”)

Among other prizes, the exiled Duke of Flatbush got a 1964 Thunderbird, a color television, and a trip to literally anywhere in the world. His Mets teammates got him a golf cart. The baseball writers gave him a typewriter. Juan Marichal of the Giants gifted Snider two strikeouts on the way to shutting out the the Mets on four hits. “It was a fine night,” Snider said, “until the game started.”

So it often went for the Mets at the old Polo Grounds. The goose egg they laid for Marichal was the start of another terrific run of futility: they were shut out three games in a row, twice by the Giants and once by the Colt .45s2.

That third shutout was the Mets’ 28th of the season, putting them in second place behind the 33 shutouts of the Deadball-era 1905 Giants. They’d make it a race by getting shut out twice more, but in the end the 1963 Mets couldn’t even be historically bad; they were just terrible.

Most fan-bases would have rejected a team like that, but New York’s still-shattered National League fans were still on the rebound in the early 1960s—and willing to forgive pretty much anything.

In 1962, the Mets’ abyssal 40-120 inaugural season scandalized baseball and demonstrated that there were still some kinks of expansion in need of working out. Searching for a workable narrative, commissioner Ford Frick, a former newspaperman, said the Mets served to “illustrate the frailties of humankind.”

That was good enough for New Yorkers, who embraced their below-replacement players with religious fervor. The more inept the performance, the louder the cheers. Such fervent, unconditional love was new in baseball, and Mets fans were dubbed “the New Breed.” In their unique fandom, people didn’t root for the team’s success as much as they rooted, ardently, for their continued existence, and every day the Mets showed up for work was a thrill.

It was a thrill for some of the Mets’ players, too. If not for the league’s expansion from eight to 10 teams, many of them surely would not have had major-league jobs, and they knew it. Asked what was great about being a Met in 1963, one rookie, Larry Bearnath, answered earnestly: “There are so many positions open here.”

If anything, the fans seemed to love the Mets even more after their appalling first season. In the summer of 1963, a stumped Washington Post writer sought out Dr. Wladimir Eliasberg, an accomplished New York psychiatrist, seeking to understand how grown men and women could celebrate a team as bad as the Mets with such passion.

“It is mass suggestion,” Dr. Eliasberg explained.

It is as contagious as a disease. When a group stands up and yells wildly—as the Mets fans do—no one dares not to follow suit. Failure to do so would mean ostracism. It is characteristic that masses latch onto a cause that is apparently destined for defeat. With them there is no such thing as frustration.

Only this fanbase had reconstituted itself from the ruins of two others. The doctor believed the Mets were the unlikely beneficiaries of that unique pain and suffering. “This is the mechanism of rejection. When the Giants and Dodgers left New York [after 1957], their fans felt like orphaned children.”

The Mets were a shiny new toy, and once-bereft New Yorkers were determined to embrace the team and be seen embracing it. It was affection with an edge of wounded spite, directed at their West Coast betrayers.

The Mets were little better in 1963, but symptoms of what writer Jimmy Breslin dubbed “Metsomania” continued. The old Polo Grounds increasingly echoed with exploding firecrackers, mostly underneath or behind the stands, but onto the field, too. After a while, the crowds greeted each bang with a rousing cheer, as if explosives had become the New York equivalent of a rousing bugle charge.

New Breed fans also seemed partial to throwing stuff, usually food and paper trash. During a game on May 12, after the public address announcer warned fans to stop throwing trash on the field or risk a forfeited game, the trash-throwers obligingly pivoted to pelting one another. No rule against that.

The Polo Grounds’ outdated layout often required a large portion of the crowd to exit onto the field and out through a large center-field gate, but after the food fight a crowd of several hundred people lingered near the gate, which was also directly below the Mets’ second-level clubhouse. They chanted “We want Choo Choo,” calling for catcher Choo Choo Coleman—who notched a game-winning single against the Reds—until Coleman finally stepped onto the landing and waved. When the applause died down, the fans called for Duke Snider and Ed Kranepool, seemingly going down a list of the day’s contributors. In the clubhouse, Casey Stengel, the manager, saw where this was going. “Tell them I’ve left town,” he said, making for the safety of the showers.

Whether he liked it or not, Stengel, the universally lauded skipper of a Yankees’ dynasty, was now at the head of a sectarian religion. Dr. Eliasberg said Stengel was “very important” to the fans’ misplaced enthusiasm. “This venerable figure offers the added comfort of a father, a leader, who knows and can do all.” Back in reality, the 73-year-old Stengel cut a comic figure in orange and blue, still hale but increasingly wizened and eccentric. Age had taken his curious patterns of speech to new heights. He became the easiest interview in the world: journalists had only to stick a microphone in front of the manager, ask a single opening question, and capture the resulting torrent of Stengelese.

During a typically stream-of-consciousness monologue for a promotional film at the end of the season, Stengel promised the club would be better in 1964. They had to be. “We’ve got to repay the money we’ve taken from the fans.”

But until a new season and a fresh start in their new ballpark in faraway Queens, William A. Shea Stadium, the Mets had to find other ways to express their gratitude. On September 15, 1963, they used words of affirmation.

Mets fans exhibited a need to express themselves from the beginning. In addition to cheers and chants, they used the written word, scaled up and painted on pillow cases and bedsheets, or printed on professionally designed placards.

“They make up wonderful placards,” Stengel said in his end-of-year monologue. “The placards are terrific.3 I even have to stop and look at them. I think I made fifteen mistakes this year reading the placards instead of watching the pitcher or watching the hitter.”

The fan-made “plackerds” Stengel admired were generally positive, boosting the team, patting themselves on the back, often tinged with a little gallows humor:

“Fifth place or bust”

“World Series tickets on sale HERE”

“All our bets are on the Mets.” (Seeing this one, a journalist warned readers that betting on the Mets was “not only illegal, but also the height of fiscal irresponsibility.”)

When vitriol was displayed, it was usually pointed west, at the Giants and the Dodgers and their scoundrel owners, Horace Stoneham and Walter O’Malley. O’Malley, perceived as the chief architect of New York’s National League-trauma, was in no danger of being forgotten:

“O’Malley is a FINK. May His Dodgers to the Bottom Sink”

As much as Mets fans wanted the world to know they’d moved on, some banners were little more than scars mounted on cardboard:

“The Bums Went Away But the METS Will Stay”

While the Colts and Mets fought to keep out of last place in the National League in their mid-September series, the baseball world was focused on a decisive clash between the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals. So consequential was this series that Don Drysdale was going to try and pitch through a serious attack of shingles which left him feeling “like I swallowed a blow-torch.” Against programming like that, a September “Battle for the Basement” at the Polo Grounds needed all the help it could get and the Mets designated September 15 as “Banner Day.”

The promotion helped draw nearly 10,000 fans despite unseasonable weather. Cool temperatures and sharp winds seemed to signal the Mets to prepare for hibernation; this team wasn’t built for autumn baseball, and wouldn’t be for quite some time.

The crowd that day was described as “impeccably behaved.” Throughout the game there was stamping and chanting. Bugles blew, accompanied by the clash of trash can lids repurposed as cymbals and the occasional snap of a firecracker in the outfield.

New York used the first six innings to run their scoreless streak out to 38 innings, but third baseman Pumpsie Green hit a two-out single in the seventh and accidentally ignited a full-blown rally, capped by a two-run home run by the scuffling but no-less-beloved Choo Choo Coleman. The score was 5-4 at the end of the inning and Mets fans had high hopes, but Colts pitcher Turk Farrell wisely (and correctly) dismissed the big inning as a fluke and proceeded to strike out New York’s last six batters.

In the fifth inning, the public address blared: “Will all those entered in the banner contest please report to the press gate in right field.” More than 400 fans gathered up their paintings and poetry and formed ranks for the parade in which their work would be judged.

The contest was loosely broken into single, double, and four-person efforts. The individual placards were usually paper or cardboard mounted on wooden picketing sticks, the two-person jobs were usually hand-printed on tablecloths and bedsheets. Some of the four-person banners measured 30 to 40 square feet.

When the parade began, the contestants re-entered the park through the center-field gate and proceeded down the lines to the blaring sounds of a George Gershwin march. A handful of beat writers serving as judges took notes from an infield platform. One of these, Newsday’s Stan Isaac, said he was looking for messages displaying the specific “joie de vivre” of the New Breed: the conviction that there was always something to celebrate if you lowered your standards far enough.

The line was so long, it took a half-hour for the last contestant to re-enter the park. The judges conferred and awarded first, second, and third place in each category. Top finishers received a season ticket to Shea Stadium’s opening season. Runners-up got four tickets to Opening Day, and bronze medalists took home an autographed baseball.

The large, four-person banner contest was won by a group borrowing from Charles Schulz’ Peanuts, depicting Charlie Brown and his friends pleading for improvement with the obligatory “Good grief…” The Mets and the Peanuts’ baseball team did have similar on-field struggles, and Schulz made more than a few references to Casey Stengel in his extensive body of work.

The runners up:

“You May Be Down on Your Cans, But You’re First with the Fans”

"I pledge allegiance to the Mets
of the National Baseball League
And to the Polo Grounds, for which it stands.
One team, under Casey, indivisible, with fun and excitement for all."

The two-person award went to a college student studying graphic design. His winning entry showed the wry humor that always went over big at the Polo Grounds.

“There is no explaining why that sign is good,” Isaacs, one of the judges, said. “It just is.”

At least the artist could explain his process: “Everybody said it was my dumbest idea, so I made it.”

Generally, the more elaborate the effort, the less it resonated with the judges. After all, there was nothing polished about the Mets. Crude, heartfelt optimism did better:

“Casey for President”

“Up the Tree in ‘63, Off the Floor in ‘64”

“Let’s Beat the Bolts off the Colts”

And if criticism wasn’t rewarded, it was at least permitted:

“Have Mercy, Don’t Play Choo Choo”

After the contest ended, the Mets marched onto the field, each player carrying a large posterboard placard. They lined up in center field and one by one turned the cards over, revealing their own message:

Polite applause became a roar when a stooped figure belatedly jogged out of the dugout carrying a final card. When he reached the end of the Mets’ line, Casey Stengel raised the day’s final placard:

“!”

One writer called the demonstration “a triumph for the Mets.” In spelling and punctuation.

Several players reportedly didn’t appreciate being conscripted into participating. Choo Choo Coleman was among them (perhaps he’d seen the fan-made sign urging his benching). “We’re here to play ball, not to carry signs,” the catcher grumbled.

This was a strange hill on which to make a stand. After a rough-but-promising 1962, Coleman spent most of 1963 batting below .200 and looking profoundly uncomfortable behind the plate. He had that home run in the first game, but also made two errors. His batterymate, Al Jackson, added three wild pitches.

In the second game of the doubleheader, the other Mets mustered only three infield singles off a 19-year-old rookie only a year out of high school. Chris Zachary had never won a game in professional baseball until he met the Mets. It was another shutout loss for New York, whose ball-playing credentials were very much open to impeachment.

Stengel hated losing to the Colts, who were supposed to be the Mets’ peers in expansion-era misery. The manager called it “a disappointing, disgusting day. We had terrible fielding, poor hitting. Sure, they have good pitchers. [Zachary] wasn’t throwing up softballs, you know.”

Stengel was irritated with his men, especially those who had quickly dressed and hightailed it out of the park. “Some of them get out of here faster than they go on the field,” he complained. Stengel said he would have ordered extra practice for the next day, but the Mets were using the Polo Grounds for a tryout event. “I don’t want to ruin those tryouts. We might get some players.”

As far as Stengel was concerned, the day had one redeeming virtue: “The banners were terrific.”

Banner Day became an annual tradition for the Mets. The team held the second iteration at Shea Stadium on August 23, 1964. There was a confused, hopeful air in the new park that summer—between August 16 and August 21, the Mets had tied a club record by winning five straight games. Deeply held truths seemed open to question. “Is the Mets’ dynasty crumbling?” one placard asked. The Mets won both games against the Cubs that day, suggesting that perhaps it was.

In between the games, after a banner parade with over a thousand participants, six Mets players marched out on the field and unrolled a banner 100 feet long:

“To All Of the Mets’ Fans: You Are The Greatest.”

Another nice, grammatically accurate sentiment, but without a Stengel exclamation point, the message lacked a certain something—until the player bringing up the rear slipped and fell, taking a large chunk of the banner down with him.

Whether a staged pratfall or a happy accident, the day’s crowd of 27,000 cheered Rod Kanehl’s tumble harder than they had cheered anything all season. It seemed a sign that the Mets’ hapless dynasty would last a little longer—

—and that was fine with them.

One More Thing:

We enjoyed this jam-packed segment of the promotional film “Let’s Go, Mets”, featuring testimonials from fans on the street, Casey Stengel’s cracked end-of-year review, and footage from the first Banner Day.

Here’s the first part of the story, in case you need it:

Episode Highlights:

- The fiercest wolves in baseball

- The difference between cute projectiles and ugly projectiles

- One fan, one hundred glass bottles thrown

- Ted gives this week’s baseball poetry reading

- A forfeit swaps one kind of Phillies loss for another

- The unsportsmanship of the malletheads

- A mysterious orange mixture and ballpark concessions in the late 1940s

Support Us

If you’re a fan of the podcast, nothing says it like becoming a paid subscriber at Project 3.18. Paid subscribers receive some special newsletter perks and help us build on what we’re doing with Clear the Field.

Subscribe now

You can also follow the show for free on your favorite platform:

Apple Podcasts Spotify RSS

Give a Rating, Like, or Restack

If you enjoyed an episode on a platform like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, can you give it a quick rating and let folks know? A 5-Star rating helps our podcast appear as suggested and helps people find us.

Here on Substack, restacking an episode is one click that really helps us, so if you had fun, please click that button up there on the far right of the episode that has two circling arrows on it.

Email

If you have comments or details that add to our stories or ideas for future installments, send us an email at clearthefieldpod@gmail.com. Gentle corrections are also welcome.

Warning: If a comment is particularly enlightening and/or funny, we might read it during a future episode.

On Social Media

Paul: Substack Instagram Facebook

Ted: Substack

Original Research and Writing: Paul Jackson

Production and Music: Ted Walker

Design: Ketaki Kulkarni

Welcome to Project 3.18, where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.

If you enjoy what you read today, please subscribe to receive our free feature stories in your inbox. And if you’ve been here for a while, we could really use your support as a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers receive access to exclusive content and help keep this publication going and growing.

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This is the second part of our story on pitcher Kevin Hickey, who went from softball on Chicago’s South Side to a walk-on tryout to a professional contract in less than a year. We pick up after three lean seasons in the minor leagues, when Hickey earned an invitation to spring training in 1981 and resolved to make it count.

Here’s Part 1, if you missed it.

On February 25, 1981, Kevin Hickey turned 25 years old on a cot in the clubhouse at Payne Field.

It had been a week since Hickey accompanied the White Sox’ equipment manager, Johnny McNamara, from Chicago to Sarasota in a rattling truck loaded down with gear. Short on cash, the pitcher had offered to help drive the team’s bats and balls south in exchange for a free ride (and a refund of his team-issued plane ticket).

When the truck arrived in Florida, there were still two weeks until the team’s block of motel rooms opened up, but Hickey hadn’t come so far so cheaply to splurge out-of-pocket on a motel bed. He borrowed a cot from somewhere and set it up in the small, wooden ballpark clubhouse.

Waiting for camp to open, he worked out with a few players who lived in the area in the offseason. Other times he got up early, put on his major-league White Sox uniform, and exercised alone, running sprints in front of 4,000 empty seats and dreaming.

Everything about Hickey’s journey to professional baseball had been unconventional, but by this point he was happy to embrace it. Without ever pitching in AAA, he was determined to make the major-league club. Why not?

I have talent and I want to put it to use instead of saying, “I could’ve done this, I could’ve done that.” I can always say that I tried. The White Sox have been very fair. They won’t lose me in the shuffle. I think I can make it. It will take hard work and breaks, but it can happen.

Since he first picked up a hard ball, Hickey had been a starting pitcher, but the White Sox rotation was full and his only chance to make the roster was as a reliever. So, he relieved. On March 15, Tony LaRussa called Hickey into a 2-2 game against the Boston Red Sox. The first two batters were bit players in the Red Sox’ system; Hickey dispatched them easily. The next batter was Jim Rice, a right-handed boogeyman. The major leagues were full of Jim Rices, and LaRussa wanted to see how Hickey handled one.

“I had butterflies, I admit it,” Hickey said, seeing that particular batter digging in against him. In 1977, when Hickey tried out for a minor-league contract, Jim Rice was an All-Star. “But you can’t worry that it’s Jim Rice up there. You have to have confidence in yourself.”

He threw a slider inside and Rice stroked it to left for a single. Hickey maintained his composure and got the final out, passing the test. When the White Sox scored in the bottom of the inning, he received his first win at the major-league level. LaRussa put him in another relief spot a few days later, also against the Red Sox, and he shut them out for three innings.

Logically, the manager reasoned, Hickey was looking at a year in AAA Edmonton. “Not many guys jump from AA to the majors.”

Thanks to general manager Roland Hemond, who was forever collecting lottery-ticket arms, Hickey had plenty of competition in camp. “Let’s face it,” another bullpen candidate said, “there are too many good pitchers here. Somebody is going to be unhappy.”

One thing he had going for him: the White Sox needed a left-handed reliever, and the incumbent, Guy Hoffman, was falling apart, giving up 12 runs in 14 innings. Meanwhile, Kevin Hickey was the best-performing pitcher in camp.

“He just kept surviving,” White Sox pitching coach Ron Schueler said. “One by one every left-hander ahead of him fell by the wayside. Kevin only had one bad outing, and we did everything we could to get him rattled.”

LaRussa warned reporters not to be fooled by Hickey’s inauspicious beginning:

People always ridicule the tryout camp, but we signed him right off the dad-gum1 camp. [His delivery] was very crude, he needed a lot of work, but he had the ability. He’s made a lot of improvements. It’s a tough nut to crack, but it’s not a situation where there’s no way he can make it. He can.

By April the crowded practice fields began thinning out. Eight pitchers, including four starters, were seen as certain to make the Sox’ roster. All four of the relievers in that group were right-handed. “I was the ninth pitcher,” Hickey said, “and the only way I was going to make the team was if they carried nine pitchers.”

LaRussa was reluctant to make a decision. Maybe he could get by with eight pitchers, for a few weeks, at least. He wanted to see how Hickey handled this home stretch of purgatory. Three days before the White Sox opened their season in Boston, Hickey had a 0.53 ERA, still the best number in camp. In 16 and ⅔ innings, he allowed seven hits and one earned run.

On April 7, after a practice, Ron Schueler pulled him aside. “Hick, stick around. Tony wants to see you.”

Hickey had seen some of the fringe guys cleaning out their lockers, put out of their misery by a grim-faced manager. He blanched. “Am I going down?”

“Just stand here,” Schueler said.

Hickey studied the coach’s crossed arms and stern expression. “I thought that was it. I’m going down.”

LaRussa came over, unsmiling and nonchalant. “Get your bags packed. You’re going north with us.”

The ninth and final White Sox pitcher ran circles around the practice-field mound for a minute and then peeled away to find a phone and call his parents. “He was like a three-year-old at Christmas,” Schueler said.

“This is the best feeling in the world,” Hickey said. “I’m getting to go home and play for the White Sox at the same time. It’s nice to be packing for the big leagues.”

Watching Hickey celebrate, LaRussa might have smiled. “When the spring began, people called him a dark horse, but that was a little too favorable.”

In his first major-league bullpen, at Fenway Park, Hickey was constantly in motion, tapping his foot or slapping his glove, looking everywhere and talking a mile a minute. “He made me nervous,” Schueler said. Hickey got warmed up once but was not called into either game in Boston. Tony LaRussa, noted sentimentalist, probably wanted to let the kid debut at home.

On Sunday April 12, Hickey’s brothers, Jimmy and Tommy, picked him up from the airport in Chicago. The three went straight to Mr. Mike’s, the neighborhood tavern that launched Kevin Hickey’s career as a 16-inch softball star. His picture was taped up in a place of honor on the mirror behind the bar and banners were strung up welcoming him home. The crowd inside gave him a standing ovation.

Over beers (he had a club soda with lime) there was much talk of the Milwaukee Brewers, likely to be the first team Hickey faced as a major leaguer. He mentioned hitters Ben Oglivie and Cecil Cooper, both left-handed: “They can really crush the ball…” He said that more than once.

The next day he borrowed his brother’s car to drive to practice at Comiskey Park. Returning to the family home in Brighton Park for dinner, 50 kids intercepted Hickey in the driveway. He signed autographs but the crowd never got smaller. He missed dinner.

The morning of the home opener was sunny and mild, with temperatures in the 50s. The old ballpark had a fresh coat of paint and a host of new faces. The White Sox had been overhauled; only two players, outfielders Chet Lemon and Harold Baines, returned to the positions they’d left at the end of the previous season. Roland Hemond had acquired outfielder Ron LeFlore and power bat Greg Luzinski, another Chicago-area native getting a chance to come home and play. The White Sox had even made their first big splash in free agency that offseason, signing former Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk to a five year, $3.5 million dollar contract.

Fisk’s deal was the work of the White Sox’ new owners, partners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn. Their predecessor, Bill Veeck, had sold the team after the 1980 season. Veeck had made a career of running teams on a shoestring and occasionally outsmarting the rest of the pack, but free agency had exploded his business model. In a bidding war, Goliath always won. Veeck spent most of his retirement warning of the ruinous effect of money on the national pastime (and sitting shirtless in his “outdoor office” in the of Wrigley Field).

Unlike Veeck, Einhorn and Reinsdorf had preexisting fortunes to draw on, and signing Fisk signaled a new era at the majors’ oldest park. The high-priced catcher made a grand entrance, opening the season against his old team at Fenway Park and hitting a three-run home run to seal a (White) Sox win.

With the excitement over Fisk and the team’s other acquisitions, Einhorn was hoping for a record turnout on the day of the home opener, and he got it. 51,560 people came to see Fisk, Luzinski, LeFlore, and Kevin Hickey, whose Brighton Park neighborhood was well represented down the left field line.

Hickey arrived at the park at 9:30 a.m. With time to spare, he checked to make sure the tickets for his father, mother, and two siblings were in order. He dressed and shagged fly balls in left field. When the Brewers appeared for their on-field workout, he drifted over to the stands, which seemed to be filling up with people he knew or remembered. He spotted an old English teacher who’d once given him a failing grade.

Hickey had spent many afternoons of his own youth on the other side of the same low brick wall, trying to catch a player’s attention and get an autograph. He never got one, so now he worked the crowd like an alderman, signing whatever he was handed and waving to familiar faces further back. A kid pressed in to introduce himself. “I’m from the neighborhood,” he said with evident pride. Just like you. Hickey solemnly shook his hand.

Don and Kathleen Hickey had only seen their son pitch (overhand) once before, for the semi-pro Midlothian Cardinals. Now Don was in and out of his seat, smoking and worrying. The White Sox had given out 40,000 miniature American flags for the game; Kathleen wrung hers back and forth in her hands until it fell apart.

Luzinski hit a two-run single in the third inning. In the fourth, the White Sox’ bats torched Brewers starter Pete Vuckovich, whose day ended when Carlton Fisk hit a grand slam.

With all that run support, White Sox starter Ross Baumgartner sailed along, limiting the Brewers to one run in the first eight innings. By the standards of the time, his performance meant that despite having already thrown over 120 pitches, he’d have first crack at the ninth.

In the bullpen, Ron Schueler told Hickey to “pop 10,” throw 10 full-effort pitches. The pitching coach was careful to not imply Hickey was going to get in the game, which Baumgartner looked poised to finish. “I didn’t want him to get all nervous.”

Eagle-eyed fans near the left field bullpen cheered when Hickey stood up. “They’d had a few beers,” Hickey said. “I just figured I’d get loose and that would be it for the day.”

But Baumgartner couldn’t finish his game. He gave up a double and then a home run to Gorman Thomas, who blasted a mistake out of the park. LaRussa jogged out. The next three Brewers batters were all right-handed, but no matter. He tapped his left arm.

As he exited the bullpen and headed for the mound, Kevin Hickey heard the roars. It seemed like the biggest ovation a middle-reliever had ever gotten. He looked for his family behind home plate but couldn’t spot them. A few more warm-up pitches, and then his first batter, third baseman Don Money. With a 1-1 count, Money hit an easy grounder to short.

The next batter, Edgardo Romero, hit a soft comebacker. Hickey was an excellent fielder. His softball days had trained him to come off the mound with both hands up, ready to defend, and he threw Romero out with no trouble.

The final batter of the game was none other than Paul Molitor, but Hickey didn’t let himself worry about that. Hickey got ahead in the count and it seemed like the whole South Side was up and screaming. Molitor popped up to second base, where Tony Bernazard made the routine catch. Hickey jumped into the air and slapped his glove against his thigh. Bernazard handed him the ball. He’d earned it.

Two months later, on July 10, the White Sox led the New York Yankees, 6-4, at home. With no outs, the Yankees had runners on first and second in the top of the ninth. A dirty inning, a high-leverage situation, and two left-handed batters coming up. New York broadcasters Phil Rizzuto and Fran Healy didn’t recognize one of the pitchers warming in the White Sox’ bullpen.

Tony LaRussa called for Hickey. Revering bunted, a bad choice against a former mushballer, who was always ready on defense. Hickey scooped up the ball and got the runner at second. Graig Nettles hit a sacrifice fly. LaRussa went to the closer, Ed Farmer, who got the last out.

Hickey earned his fifth hold, and the next day he’d get two batters in two different innings to earn his sixth. LaRussa had used him carefully that spring, but now it was summer and the training wheels were coming off.

The manager was getting tired of people underestimating Hickey (and, by proxy, his decision-making). “He’s got a major-league fastball that sinks,” LaRussa bristled. “He’s worked harder than anybody on the team. And we needed a left-handed reliever.”

LaRussa conceded that Hickey had “a hell of a story” to go along with his serviceable major-league arm. It was just a few miles from the neighborhood softball fields in Burroughs Park to Comiskey, but the diamonds might as well have been on different planets. Only person had managed to make the trip.

We think New York Times writer Ira Berkow put it best:

“If there were a longer shot than Kevin Hickey, it would have to be from Mars.”

A week after Kevin Hickey’s pivotal outings against the Yankees, the Major League Baseball Players Association went on strike. The work stoppage wiped out more than a third of the season between June 11 and August 10. Hickey and teammate Ed Farmer reportedly kept loose during the strike playing catch in the alley behind the Hickey family home, drawing appreciative crowds.

When the strike ended, the White Sox’ pitching faltered and the team slipped from second to third place and stayed there. Hickey finished his first major league season with a 3.65 ERA in 44 innings and three saves, but as a reliever in his mid-20s, the strike cost him crucial development time, a loss he never really got over.

There’s more to say about Kevin Hickey and his remarkable life in baseball, but for now let’s leave him here at the top of the mountain in Chicago. Roland Hemond always felt this was Hickey’s defining moment, when “a South Side kid got the most out of his ability” and used it to make good.

Over on Clear the Field:

Is it “pop,” “soda,” or “coke”? Does it really matter when you’re an umpire and a glass bottle of said carbonated beverage is being thrown your direction? In our latest episode, Ted and I set up a particularly fizzy baseball forfeit.

In 1949, a team of showboating umpires tangled with the last group of fans still being served (non-alcoholic) drinks in glass bottles. It didn’t end well.

Episode Highlights:

- The Philadelphia Phillies’ mid-life identity crisis

- Three performative umpires

- Ted tries to make “Pafko” happen

- Shibe Park: No booze, but projectiles welcome

- History repeats itself and Richie Ashburn lights a fire under the toughest crowd in sports

We’ll be back next week with the conclusion, when the worked-up crowd causes enough chaos to drive at least one umpire into retirement and prompts some much-needed changes to beverage distribution procedures at Shibe Park.

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Original Research and Writing: Paul Jackson

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Design: Ketaki Kulkarni

Welcome to Project 3.18, where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.

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The Chicago White Sox were in the midst of a prolonged slump in the summer of 1978. A year earlier, the South Side Hit Men had successfully covered up the team’s pitching deficiencies and homered their way into a thrilling season (and lucrative free-agent contracts elsewhere). Without the money to pay their stars, Bill Veeck, president of the White Sox, and his general manager, Roland Hemond, went back to the drawing board.

In May, during a particularly rough stretch, one frustrated fan tried to help out, paying for an unauthorized ad in the “Job Guide” section of the Chicago Tribune:

Interested parties were encouraged to apply via a local advertising agency and nearly 100 people did. Their applications, silly, sad, and serious, were forwarded to the White Sox. Bill Veeck promised to give them a look.

The White Sox owner was always game to “fool around,” and beyond appreciating a good gag, Veeck said he’d learned prospect due-diligence the hard way. He claimed that back in his time in Cleveland, in 1948, a friend of a friend moonlighted as a scout for the Indians, “just as a hobby.” Veeck said one day he got an urgent call from this bird dog, who said he’d turned over an unpolished, 16-year-old, power-hitting gem playing on a semi-pro team in Oklahoma.

“I gave our scouting people the name and told them to look him over,” Veeck recalled, years later. But the scouts doubted the substance of the tip and were slow to act. “By the time they saw the kid, he had signed with another club. His name was Mantle. Mickey Mantle.”

Whether or not that story was true, in 1978, Veeck and the White Sox were taking no chances on missing the pitching equivalent of the Commerce Comet. The owner swore he had nothing to do with the ad in the Tribune, but he and the Sox scouts sifted through the responses and came up with 46 serious applications: 39 righties, six lefties, and one man who claimed to be ambidextrous. All were invited to an in-person June tryout at Comiskey Park. If nothing else, it would be good publicity for the team.

Tom Renz, age 23, did prove to be ambidextrous. Alternately throwing left-handed and right-handed, he pitched off the mound of the left-field bullpen and some of his pitches (from either hand) even made it over the plate. There was just one problem: none of them hit 50 miles-per-hour on the radar gun doing most of the evaluation.

Renz had a good attitude about his performance: “Switch-pitching worked fine for me back home. I had to switch arms to keep the ball in the park. We had a short left field. Of course, that was in wiffle ball.”

Nearly all the candidates were White Sox fans (or the rarer “Chicago fans”—Renz, from Indiana, was planning to take in a Cubs game after the tryout). Otherwise, their backgrounds were as varied as their attire. Some wore baseball and softball uniforms representing recreational and semi-pro teams across the South Side and the suburbs. Others wore sweat pants, cutoff shorts, or jogging outfits. The oldest candidate was 39 and the youngest was 13. We’d like to imagine Veeck himself pushed that latter application into the “maybe” pile. No harm in giving a young fan a great memory in Comiskey’s left-field bullpen.

When all had shot their shot, none of the 47 “pitchers” who showed up proved of immediate interest. “On a scale of 1 to 10,” White Sox scout Steven Vrablik said, “I’d give everyone who showed up a 10…for courage.”

Vrablik said the team would follow up with a few marginal cases to offer developmental advice and stay in touch, but mostly the scheme had failed, as such tryouts nearly always failed. The days when a major-league-caliber player could be plucked off the sandlot or the factory field were long gone. By the late 1970s, the world was too small.

Veeck’s White Sox had been running their own tryouts for several years. The participants were a combination of people who’d written the team asking for a look and local players who had come to the attention of regional White Sox scouts, some of whom made the rounds between various well-regarded semi-pro teams, just in case. When a player piqued their interest, the scouts made introductions and invited him to a tryout.

In 1977, a lefthanded pitcher named Kevin Hickey received such an invitation. That summer, Hickey, 21 years old, had starred on a local semi-pro team, the Midlothian Cardinals. He was 6’ 1” and 170 pounds, with skinny, whip-like arms. He worked second shift as an arc welder at a local steel plant. Because of his job, he only pitched on weekends, but his manager tried to use him whenever he knew scouts were lurking nearby. That summer Hickey won nine games as a weekend warrior, striking out 86 batters in 71 innings. He even threw back-to-back no-hitters. After the second no-no, a White Sox scout appeared with an invitation.

Wearing his Cardinals uniform, Hickey showed up to Comiskey Park on August 17, 1977. His expectations for the tryout were mixed. On the one hand, he imagined a small affair, maybe 20-30 real contenders, giving him a chance to stand out. On the other hand, “I was told they never sign anyone from these tryouts,” he said. “I figured my chances were two—slim and none.”

Tryout camps were cheap to run and a reliable source of local goodwill, but Roland Hemond, the White Sox general manager, conceded the odds were long: “It’s a distinct rarity for an eventual major leaguer to come out of one of these camps, but you never know.”

Expecting a few dozen hopefuls, a dismayed Hickey joined a line of 200 other “prospects” aged 18-29. All shapes, sizes, and colors were represented. Some of the others were wearing jeans and sneakers. He spotted more than one plastic-looking glove. “They gave us each a paper number to pin on our back. I became very skeptical. I thought the whole thing was a big joke.”

He almost turned around and left, but when an early number was pinned on his back, he decided to stay.

I was the second guy scheduled to pitch. I remember the first guy vividly. He was a real hot dog. He did wind sprints in the outfield before he took the mound. And he kept juggling this leaded ball. He threw exactly three pitches and they told him to take a hike.

Then it was his turn on a major-league bullpen mound. A handful of anonymous men with clipboards regarded him blankly. One half-heartedly aimed the radar gun in his general direction.

“I just went out there and threw fastballs,” Hickey said. “I didn’t have any style at all—I was too upright in my delivery. But after a half-dozen pitches, I noticed the scouts were making notes on their clipboards and looking at each other kind of funny.”

They were also looking at the radar gun. The skinny-armed kid’s fastballs were hitting 95 miles-an-hour.

Hickey threw about 30 pitches. Toward the end, one of the scouts said, “Let’s see your curve.” Hickey threw what he thought was his curve. “That’s a slider,” the scout said. Hickey had to take his word for it.

Finally one of the men called a halt. “Thanks for coming in,” he said. “We’ll contact you.”

Inwardly, Hickey sighed. “I thought, ‘Sure you will.’”

Kevin Hickey was born in the White Sox’ shadow. He and his parents and four siblings lived on the 2700 block of West 36th Street in Brighton Park, a transportation hub and ethnically diverse neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. As a free-range kid, he became a regular visitor to Comiskey Park, just a few miles straight east from his home. “I couldn’t afford good seats, so I’d usually sit behind a pillar in the left-field bleachers.”

Hickey started throwing against a brick wall in his backyard and grew into one of the most athletic kids in the neighborhood. He played baseball until his freshman year of high school, but dropped it to take an after-school job. After high school, he found work at the Ryerson Steel Company, and like tens of thousands of other Chicagoans, he nourished his soul playing 16-inch softball.

“Slow pitch” softball is serious about velocity. Instead of whipping the ball, which is softer and larger than the ball used in fast-pitch, pitchers must lob it, and any pitch coming in too fast is an automatic ball.

The sport was invented in the Chicago area and became a regional phenomenon. It grew in popularity among workers without the time or skills to succeed in baseball who still wanted to play, and it required only a ball and bat to play—no gloves. By the late 1970s the Chicago area alone had approximately 250,000 players. On the lakefront, sprawling Grant Park and its 16 diamonds were in constant rotation, each hosting two performances of “the greatest game on dirt” almost every day.

One of the best teams on the scene was the Chicago Bobcats. The Bobcats formed in 1951 and dominated the local competition by becoming the softball equivalent of the modern-day Dodgers, collecting the best players by offering them the opportunity to play with the best of the rest. When a national 16-inch tournament started in 1964, the Bobcats won 11 of the first 15 titles.

Skeptics liked to say slow-pitch softball was to baseball as ping pong was to tennis. “Writers who weren’t involved used to classify [softball] as guys running to second base where there was a beer waiting for them,” Eddie Zolna, the Bobcats’ player-manager, told a reporter in 1980. And softball was that, but it was also something else. “Although this is a simple game to play, it takes a great amount of ability to play it exceptionally well.”

Kevin Hickey played it that way. After high school, Hickey hooked up with a softball team sponsored by his neighborhood bar, but his superior range and agility were quickly flagged. By the mid-1970s, Hickey was playing center field for the Bobcats, and sometimes taking freelance assignments for other teams, so long as the opposition didn’t recognize him and protest. He batted cleanup and did a lot of that. He once hit four home runs in one game off famed Chicago columnist Mike Royko, a 16-inch devotee. In 1976, Hickey pitched the Bobcats to another world championship.

Hickey’s softball career was derailed soon after that championship run. His job reassigned him from the first shift to the second, 4 p.m. to midnight, and the Bobcats were too serious to roster part-time players, even talented ones. A police officer who had watched Hickey play recommended he try the semi-pro Cardinals baseball team, which was open to more flexible arrangements. After whipping all those softballs in from the outfield, throwing a baseball from the mound was nothing for the newest Cardinal, who broke out as a hardball pitcher.

It’s possible the Sox scouts said, “We’ll be in touch,” to all the hopefuls who threw during the tryout at Comiskey Park, just to keep the line moving. But only one candidate actually heard back. On August 18, Hickey’s phone rang. It was the White Sox, asking if he’d be around that afternoon. Word went round the neighborhood from house to house and by the appointed time a small crowd was loitering around the front porch of the Hickey family home. Two White Sox scouts arrived with a professional contract.

“These guys came in and I thought it was a gag,” Hickey recalled. But there was a bonus of $500 on the table, and if he signed his name, he’d join the White Sox for spring training and be assigned to a farm team in 1978. Hickey and his dad huddled briefly and he signed.

When news of Hickey’s contract broke, Bill Veeck’s assistant, Charlie Ervanian, put it in context:

It’s been done before, but the chances are slim. This is the fourth tryout camp I’ve been at and this is the first boy I saw signed. There were other kids we still want to follow but he’s the only one we wanted to grab up quickly.

Hickey had beaten “one in a million” odds by coming away from a walk-on tryout with a professional contract, but he was still at the wrong end of the probability tables. Only five percent of minor-league players ever reached the majors. But compared to one-in-a-million, one-in-twenty must have seemed downright roomy.

The White Sox’ newest prospect was invited to spend the remainder of the 1977 season at Comiskey Park and use his live arm to throw batting practice to the major-league players. He reported to Payne Field in Sarasota, Florida the following March. His alphabetically assigned locker was between major-leaguers Ralph Garr and Chet Lemon. He got a uniform. An ugly uniform, to be sure, but it was real.

Hickey encountered the first bump in his developmental road almost immediately. The Sox had planned to assign him to a rookie-league team based in Sarasota after spring training, but the club folded and the organization had more raw pitchers than it could cram into A-level Appleton. Hickey was not chosen for placement. The team told him to go home, keep pitching BP, and bide his time. “They said, ‘We’ll find a place for you, somewhere.’”

In limbo at Comiskey Park, “I would throw for about a half-hour,” Hickey said. “When somebody like [Angels pitcher] Frank Tanana was pitching against [the White Sox], they would have me throw hard in batting practice. Then I’d do my running and shag flies in the outfield.”

The team soon established a relationship with a new rookie league affiliate, the Highlanders of the Appalachian League, based in Paintsville, Kentucky. Hickey vividly remembered the un-PC moment when he received his first assignment: “When they sent me there, they asked me if I could speak ‘hillbilly.’ I said, ‘No, but I can learn.’”

Hickey struggled in Paintsville, giving up 37 hits and 23 walks in 33 innings. He told a local newspaper it was hard to adjust to small town life. “I was homesick. There are no bars or discos here.” Remember, this was 1978, when disco was practically everywhere.

He’d given up a full-time job to play baseball for next to nothing. He called home collect, asking whoever answered if they could help him out a little. His four siblings and parents all pitched in. “I’m sure my wife wrote checks I didn’t see,” his father, Don Hickey, said, “but I’m also sure she doesn’t know about the money I sent.”

With his family backing him, Hickey stuck it out. In 1979, he was promoted to the Appleton Foxes, but his performance wasn’t much better; he gave up 122 hits and 74 walks in 121 innings.

Roland Hemond said it wasn’t all bad—Hickey was averaging 2 strikeouts per 3 innings pitched. After 1979, he participated in a fall instructional league and pitching instructor Ron Schueler taught him how to throw a change-up.

“He picked it up in ten minutes,” Hemond said. “That’s quick for anybody, even major leaguers.”

Having a functional off-speed pitch let Hickey to dial down his fastball to a place where he knew where it was going. He issued only four walks and had an ERA of just 1.45 over 31 innings and got another invitation to spring training.

“He wouldn’t be coming if we didn’t think he could make it,” Bill Veeck said in 1980. “We were very impressed with him in the Florida Instructional League. For the first time, he got the ball over the plate.”

Hickey’s story had been lost in the lower minors, but in spring training he was back in the spotlight, and now his chances of actually reaching the majors were much better than five percent, adding even more interest. As always, Veeck was the sage.

“A lot of people will be surprised if Kevin makes our team this year,” the owner said. “But I will not be among them.”

In the end, Hickey didn’t make the team, but he was promoted again, to the AA White Sox in Glens Falls, New York. His numbers as a starter remained mixed, but the walk numbers were coming down, and he did much better against lefthanders.

The cash-strapped White Sox were rebuilding and needed left-handed relief help. Schueler told Hickey he might have a shot to make the team in 1981, but “I don’t think he believed me.”

Hickey believed enough to spend the winter before 1981 working out with two big-league White Sox pitchers, Ken Kravec and Ross Baumgarten. He didn’t have a car, so his brother Tom drove him to Comiskey Park every day. Still living in the family home in Brighton Park, he did his evening stretch work in the living room.

As a crucial spring training neared, Hickey was desperately short on cash, but he thought of a way to stretch things out. Knowing that the first White Sox equipment truck would head south several weeks before the players did, he went to talk to Roland Hemond.

Hemond and Veeck had different styles, but they both cherished an underdog. Veeck loved the story, but Hemond saw an edge. Over the course of his many decades working in major-league front offices, Hemond was consistently drawn to baseball’s “unfortunates,” believing they were likely to work harder. “You pick players who have been stymied,” Hemond said in 1990. “They need a chance. I like that method.”

A month before spring training in 1981, Kevin Hickey approached Hemond, asking if he could cash in his team-purchased plane ticket and help drive the equipment truck from Illinois to Florida. Hemond’s radar went up. Here was a player who needed a chance, doing everything he could to hang on long enough to get one.

Reflecting on his time in the minors later, Hickey said, “I probably would have given up once or twice, except no one ever came up to me and said, ‘You can’t do it.’” Now it was Roland Hemond’s turn to keep his peace. The general manager could have let this cash-strapped marginal AA pitcher down gently, right there and then.

Instead, Hemond refunded Hickey’s plane ticket and found him a seat on the truck.

In the conclusion, Kevin Hickey goes from a one-in-a-million to one-in-twenty to one.

This Week’s Lineup:

- A visit to the National Ballpark Museum in Denver

- Keeping tabs on author Eric Nusbaum

- Wrigley Field needs an F-16 rule

- Cal Raleigh and Hack Wilson

(Here’s an outstanding write-up of Hack Wilson, the good and the ugly, by writer Jacob Bielecki)

- Shifts in starting pitching milestones. Who’s the next pitcher to throw 2,000 innings? Will anyone?

- The Altoona Curve and a rabbit hole of train history

- Old-school check-in featuring Jefry Yan, Davis Martin, and Sal Stewart

What’s This?

Every few weeks in “Slap Hits,” Ted and I cover whatever has delighted us from present-day baseball (or sometimes things even further afield) in a lightning round.

There will be news (of a kind), opinion, banter when we agree, and arguing when we don’t. We’re looking at items big and small, obscure or viral, we’re going quick, and we’re not stopping to fact-check.

Got a Slap Hit?

Send us an amusing, baseball adjacent item (interpretation is up to you) you’d like us to mention, bonus points for weird and obscure. Listen to a few episodes of “Slap Hits” and you’ll get the sense of what we like to cover, and it’s often things that don’t get covered elsewhere that delight us the most. If we use it, we’ll credit you for the submission during the show!

Email tips and suggestions to clearthefieldpod@gmail.com or leave a comment here on the episode.

Welcome to Project 3.18, where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.

If you enjoy what you read today, please subscribe to receive our free feature stories in your inbox. And if you’ve been here for a while, we could really use your support as a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers receive access to exclusive content and help keep this publication going and growing.

Subscribe now

In the Beginning… / Au Commencement…

Charles Bronfman, the founding owner of the Montreal Expos, was an unlikely pick to design the team’s first mascot, but when you run the place you get to hand out the assignments. Clearly in need of a creative outlet, in 1977 Bronfman tasked himself with “designing a mascot that was very modern, just like [Montreal’s Olympic Stadium].” His take on modernity ended up being pretty futuristic, featuring black leather gloves, pointed shoulders, and a airlock-type turtleneck, topped by a baseball head that ripped off New York’s Mr. Met in theory if not in practice. The result, even Bronfman admitted, was…disconcerting. “It was so outstanding that it scared the heck out of the kids and was despised by just about everyone.”

Bronfman’s creation, dubbed “Souki” (a non-French name assigned, sight unseen, by an ad hoc committee), debuted in 1978. It would have taken a gifted performer to bring any warmth into that character, but instead the Expos gave the job to a guy some of his own colleagues described as a “street tough.” Without any natural charisma and so top-heavy he couldn’t kneel or bend over, Souki stalked the lower sections of Olympic Stadium, stiffly greeting wary fans and putting fear into the hearts of children. In 2020, several longtime Expos’ employees recalled watching kids flee from Souki as if he had just stepped out of a baseball-themed nightmare.

Perhaps putting a rough character in the suit was a good thing. Rodger Brulotte, the Expos’ traveling secretary at the time, once saw Souki get sucker-punched by an angry fan. The performer told his assailant he’d be back, sans costume, an inning later to take his revenge. After that, Brulotte remembered, “we told ourselves we might not have the right guy inside the suit.”

At least Souki’s second performer never threatened to fight anyone, despite receiving similar treatment. A member of the radio team, Paul Houde, recalled a later incident:

It’s the end of September, it was cold at night, the Expos lost and I think Souki scared a kid. So the guy says, “Hey Souki, you’re done tonight!” and he punches Souki in the face. It was the first time I had ever seen a mascot get punched. The ball that made up Souki’s head caved in. It probably didn’t hurt the [performer]—but he was so used to being a mascot that he grabbed his head and started acting like he was hurt.

At the end of his first season, the Expos’ marketing team determined that Souki had to go. Instead of simply retiring the mascot, they offered him symbolically to a fraternity at the Université de Montréal, who was interested in administering the character’s last rites during a pledge event. Brulotte, the Expos’ traveling secretary, was assigned to inhabit the costume during Souki’s symbolic death. We swear, all of this is true.

“I want people to scream…”

After Souki was offered up to the frat boys, Bronfman retired as a character designer and the Expos brought in real experts to start over. They commissioned Harrison/Erickson, a studio run by Bonnie Erickson, a designer who helped Jim Henson create many of his iconic Muppets characters, to design the Expos’ next mascot. Erickson was a hot commodity after helping the Phillies’ create their own supersized Muppet of uncertain taxonomy, the Phillie Phanatic.

The Expos’ team took an active role in the design process, vetoing a purple character and requesting bright orange, a nod to the team’s first star, the red-headed Rusty Staub, “Le Grand Orange.” They also replaced a drooping anteater-like nose with a short one Brulotte described as a bit more “typical of a Québécois nose.”

Brulotte recalled the conversation that named the new character. Roger Landry, the Expos’ Vice President of Marketing, said he wanted people to be so excited when they saw the mascot that they cried “Youppi!”—the French version of “Yippee!” or “Yay!” And what better way to guarantee that reaction than by making that the name, right down to the exclamation point, which became part of Youppi!’s official moniker and the symbol he wore on the back of his oversize Expos jersey.

Youppi! debuted at Olympic Stadium on April 14, 1979. His first performer was a 25-year-old Expos fan named Denis Desaulniers, who successfully auditioned for the part.

Inspired by the trailblazing antics of Ted Giannoulas, the performer inside the Famous Chicken of San Diego, Desaulniers brought Youppi to life as “a teenager that never grew up,” a mischief-maker who loved grabbing attention during slow or transitional moments. Unlike Souki, the orange hominid was agile and durable enough to drop to his knees and solicit ice-breaking hugs from skeptical children. Youppi’s warmth made all the difference—but Desaulniers wore a motorcycle helmet inside the costume, just in case.

Making History

Desaulniers portrayed Youppi until 1983. His replacement, Jean-Claude Tremblay, was as much a costume technician as comedian, and his two-year tenure brought major upgrades to Youppi, including more secure google eyes and modular, washable parts. The latter was essential as the original costume, not washable, had something of a funk. No wonder Desaulniers left.

Tremblay’s talent as a comedian may have been lacking. On August 30, 1984, the San Francisco Giants were in Montreal. In the third inning of the game, the team’s mascot, identified as “Youppie” in San Francisco accounts, went too far, reportedly “making fun of the waistline” of first base umpire John McSherry.

McSherry, normally a genial presence on the diamond, struggled with his weight throughout his umpiring career, and Youppi’s mean-spirited taunting struck a nerve. McSherry wasn’t going to take that disrespect from a mascot, especially one with a paunch of his own, so he threw the offender out.

The ejection could have been assigned to Tremblay, the man inside the suit, but according to official records kept by Retrosheet, it was assigned to the character. That’s probably correct. McSherry probably didn’t even know who the performer was. That night, Youppi became the first costumed mascot to ever be thrown out of a major-league game. That scrap of history was mostly lost in the night’s 4-3 Giants victory, but it was history. The mascot had entered his name (and exclamation mark) on the eternal register of bad actors, alongside malcontents like Earl Weaver, Leo Durocher, and John McGraw.

The Mascot Wars

The 1980s were the costumed mascots’ “Bad Boy” era (we’ll leave Mrs. Met out of it), and Youppi was hardly the only source of trouble.

• In May 1987, the Pittsburgh Pirates suspended their own mascot, the Pirate Parrot, after an incident in a game against the Dodgers. During that game, umpire Fred Brocklander made a controversial call, initially ruling that outfielder Andy Van Slyke had caught a line drive hit by the Dodgers’ Steve Sax. The umpire changed his mind and decided Van Slyke had trapped the ball, putting Sax on base and earning the ire of fans at Three Rivers Stadium.

  Shortly after that play, the Pirate Parrot rode his motor scooter onto the field and acted like he was about to toss a bucket of water on Brocklander, later throwing a plastic ball at the embattled official. The team found this conduct worthy of a one-day suspension. The performer inside the suit, Tom Mosser, apologized, saying he had missed the controversial call while getting ready to perform; his targeting of Brocklander was an unfortunate coincidence.

  Mosser’s miscue highlighted the toughest part of his job. Mascots had to situate their performances to the events of the game, requiring them to keep one googly eye on the play-by-play while preparing and executing context-appropriate bits and stunts. It was a lot to keep track of. Like the umpires, sometimes they missed things.

• In August 1987, during a game at Olympic Stadium, Chicago Cubs reliever Willie Hernandez was knocked out of a game by the home team, and Youppi’s third performer, Claude Hubert, was waiting for him on top of the visitors’ dugout, pretending to reel the pitcher in like a prize fish. Hernandez was so unamused he threw his glove at the mascot—and missed. The odd-shaped missile flew 12 rows into the stands and hit a woman in the mouth. She subsequently sued Hernandez for $500 and kept his glove. Hernandez said he didn’t care. “It didn’t have any outs in it, anyway.” Youppi somehow escaped litigation.

• On August 28, 1988, Tommy Lasorda decided to make a stand. The manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers had watched for several years as the Phillie Phanatic marched a stuffed doll wearing a “Lasorda” shirt onto the field and stomped on it with his size 56 shoes. This time, Dave Raymond, the Phanatic’s longtime performer, ran over the doll with his three-wheeler, a move he later admitted was too much, even for the Phanatic’s slapstick sense of humor. Lasorda marched out of the dugout and confronted the mascot, retrieving his likeness and using it to bludgeon the Phanatic, who fell to the ground in surprise.

  

  The manager departed with the doll but quickly turned it over to Philadelphia authorities, who gave it right back to Raymond. Inside his green creature suit, the performer was unhurt. He said he’d initially assumed Lasorda was doing a bit. “But he hit me over the head, yanked at the [costume]’s head. I finally crawled off to the camera booth. I said, ‘Okay, the gloves are off.’” Raymond brought the dummy back out two innings later and fed it pizza. (Sorry, we don’t have a gif of that.)

Lasorda confirmed he’d been serious and clarified the Phanatic’s offense. The manager didn’t mind being the butt of a joke, but the mascot had disrespected Dodger Blue. “I like the kid,” Lasorda said of Raymond, then 31, “but what he did wasn’t entertainment. I love the Dodgers and it wasn’t right for him to stomp on the doll with the uniform. There were a lot of kids there, and he’s showing them violence. He didn’t need to do that.” What message Lasorda hoped the kids would take from his own actions is not clear.

In the wake of the tussle, an ESPN commentator suggested MLB’s mascots needed to band together to protect themselves from the assaults of baseball codgers like Tommy Lasorda. He even attributed words to this effect to Youppi, saying the Expos’ mascot had called for unionization and a lawsuit against the Dodgers’ manager.

The Expos were quick to shoot down the report: “Youppi doesn’t talk to reporters or anyone else.” He didn’t talk at all, in fact. Like many of his peers (and unlike his predecessor), the Expos’ mascot had no mouth and was performatively mute.

That should have cleared things up, but perhaps Lasorda missed coverage of Youppi’s denial. Whatever beef existed between the two simmered until August 1989, when the thin-skinned manager helped Youppi make history again.

“One of those nights.”

On August 23, 1989, the Expos hosted the Dodgers at the Big O. Any game started by Orel Hershiser and Pascual Pérez promised to be a pitching duel, but the 0-0 score after nine innings hinted at the possibility of something much grander. In fact, this was Canada’s version of the Rick Camp Game.

In the top of the seventh inning, for instance, the Expos seemed to have pulled off a thrilling triple play, but in a subsequent conference the umpires reversed the initial decision, sparking a string of arguments. Overseeing such a tense and frustrating game put Tommy Lasorda was on edge. Meanwhile, Youppi had stationed himself on top of the Dodgers’ dugout. “Perhaps I was making a little more noise than usual,” Hubert, the performer, said later.

His heavy footsteps irritated Lasorda. Television cameras picked up the manager shouting “Get the f*** off my dugout.” He then addressed a third party, probably third-base umpire Bob Davidson: “I don’t want him jumping on my dugout.” Youppi clambered down and made the sign of a halo over his head.

Hubert knew he was playing a dangerous game. “Well, I knew [Lasorda] didn’t love mascots,” the performer told mlb.com in 2022. “Because he did something with the Phillie Phanatic.” Nevertheless, Hubert had to keep needling. That was the job.

Meanwhile, the pitchers’ duel continued. Pérez departed after eight innings, Hershiser after seven. An ensemble cast of nine different relievers, most working multiple innings, kept the double shutout going.

By the eleventh inning, Youppi had slipped into something more comfortable, donning oversized pajamas and a nightcap. The weary mascot found a comfy spot to nap: the roof of the Dodgers’ dugout. Youppi belly-flopped into a prone position, alerting Lasorda to his presence.

The manager emerged from the dugout and tossed more barbed words in Youppi’s direction. Seeing the mascot antagonizing Lasorda again, umpire Bob Davidson took matters into his own hands. He stopped play and ordered Youppi to leave the game. The lovable monster had been ejected again.

Hubert admitted to at least one noisy pratfall on top of the dugout as he put himself to bed, but in his version of events, a group of kids sitting behind the dugout were banging their feet on the roof, creating the clamor that drew Lasorda onto the field. “The first thing he saw was me,” Hubert recalled. “I explained it wasn’t me [making the noise], it was the fans. He understood, but [Davidson] thought Tommy was yelling at me, so he said, ‘Youppi, get out of the game.’”

Youppi picked up his pillow, shook his head, and departed for the concourse, earning cheers from the dwindling crowd. At first, the Expos’ staff weren’t sure if Davidson was trying his hand at comedy or if he had really ejected a mascot for napping. They made discreet inquiries and Davidson assured them he had no sense of humor whatsoever.

While the mascot stayed out of sight, chants of “Youppi, Youppi, Youppi…” picked up steam, peppered with feedback for Davidson. “I got booed a lot [as an umpire],” the umpire said. “But they booed me pretty good that night.”

Davidson worked 3,911 games between 1982 and 2016. He ejected 166 players, managers, and other parties during his career, including Youppi. None of that was particularly noteworthy. Other umpires had issued hundreds more ejections and even Youppi had been ejected before. But as the twelfth inning proceeded amid a groundswell of support for Youppi, Bob Davidson did something that no umpire had ever done.

Either to restore peace or regretting his zealousness, Davidson allowed Youppi back onto the field—as long as he stayed away from the Los Angeles dugout. It was the first ejection-reversal in history. No other banished offender had ever been allowed to return, even if the umpire decided he’d been too hasty. In the midst of such a tight game, Davidson probably didn’t appreciate the historical counter he’d moved from 0 to 1.

In the 16th inning, Expos right fielder Larry Walker was on third base and catcher Mike Fitzgerald (who worked the entire game) hit what appeared to be a walk-off sacrifice fly. The Dodgers protested, saying Walker had left the bag too early. Davidson said nothing and the Expos celebrated, until finally somebody threw the ball to third base. Davidson called Walker out, confirming the Dodgers’ suspicions and erasing the win. “It was one of those nights,” Davidson said later.

In the 22nd inning, Dodgers backup catcher Rick Dempsey hit a solo home run, only his second of the season, driving a hanging curve ball over the left field fence. Rather than pump his fist or cheer, Dempsey only shook his head. The Expos could not answer in their last at-bat. Dempsey threw out a runner attempting to steal and the six-hour marathon was over.

The game tied the record (by innings) for the longest Los Angeles Dodgers game ever and broke the record for longest Expos game in the history of the franchise. It was also the longest shutout loss for any team since the Mets put up a 24-inning goose-egg in 1968.

“I have never in my life seen a game like this,” Lasorda said. “Never. Not ever.”

Youppi’s banishment was merely a footnote in most accounts, and if a writer lingered at all, most assumed it was the mascot’s first ejection. Only Jayson Stark, then a baseball writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, with an assist from the Expos’ publicist, Rich Griffin (the same joker who put Olympic Stadium’s roof on the Disabled List in 1991), correctly marked this as Youppi’s second ejection. But no one apparently noticed that an umpire had performed baseball’s first un-ejection.

Claude Hubert remained inside the orange suit until 1991. He remains the only mascot performer to be ejected from two baseball games, but seems to have kept a lower profile after 1989. The Mascot Wars continued elsewhere, as baseball’s fur-suited instigators kept pushing the limits of baseball’s unique brand of performance art, often at Tommy Lasorda’s expense. As always, the Phillie Phanatic was in the vanguard, though, we must point out, the Phanatic has never been ejected.

The Dance

Dave Raymond, the performer inside the Phanatic, kept up his dummy bit even after Lasorda ripped it out of his furry hands and beat him with it in 1988. He continued upping the ante on a semi-annual basis, smashing souvenir Dodger batting helmets and even destroying cans of Ultra Slimfast, a diet drink powder Lasorda prolifically endorsed. During a July 1991 series at Veterans Stadium, the Phanatic did all of the above and Lasorda boiled over again:

I’ve worn three uniforms in my day and been as proud as a man can be of all three. Wore the Boy Scout uniform, the uniform of the U.S. Army, and the Dodgers’ uniform, and I don’t want to see some idiot making a spectacle of them. If he wants to entertain, if he wants to dance, that’s great, but I don’t believe in demonstrating violence at the ballpark.

At least this time he used his words.

Dave Raymond used his, too. “Tommy talks about the Dodger uniform,” Raymond said. “What about the way I feel about the Phillies’ uniform? This is our ballpark. That’s why I did the bit today.”

Baseball has always taken itself so seriously. The antics of the anarchist mascots of the 1970s and 1980s became a healthy check on the natural puffery of purist lifers like Lasorda, a check the fans embraced. Mascots walked a dangerous line and regularly overstepped, but the game’s enduring popularity depended on a mix of timeless tradition and a little modern irreverence.

Raymond tried to wordlessly make that point the night after Lasorda put their strained relationship back in the spotlight. The Phanatic brought his dummy out again, this time dancing with it, to the sounds of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

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In early August 1999, Todd Greene, a reserve catcher with the Anaheim Angels, requested a new locker assignment, and made no bones about it.

“Are you kidding? That locker has caused two Hall-of-Fame-type guys to get released and a guy to hit .230 and get demoted.” Keeping one’s unmentionables in a cubby like that was pure folly.

Greene knew his history. The locker’s 1997 occupant had been 41-year-old Eddie Murray, who began the 20th and final season of his career with Anaheim but was released in midseason. In 1998, the Angels signed Cecil Fielder. Certainly not a “Hall-of-Fame-type,” as Greene declared, Fielder was a Hall-of-Pretty-Good-type, and the Angels hoped he’d fill the role Murray could not, so much so that they gave him the same locker. Unfortunately, Fielder followed Murray’s course in Anaheim so closely that it ended the same way, cleaning out the same clubhouse shelves.

The locker’s third casualty was Greene. He’d been sent down to AAA Edmonton on July 7 and recalled on July 30. Returning to the Angels, he was taking no chances. The day he changed lockers, Greene had two hits and scored two runs, reinforcing his suspicions. He spent the rest of the season safely in the majors, and, looking at his numbers, it’s hard not to give the locker change the credit.

Greene’s request, and the motivation behind it, surely surprised no one. Baseball players are superstitious by nature. The more desperate they are, the more magical their thinking becomes.

1999 was not a great season for Todd Greene, wherever he hung his hat, and it was a pretty bad year for the Anaheim Angels, too. After promising seasons in 1997 and 1998, the team had fallen back into the cellar of the American League West. By August 4, Anaheim was 19.5 games out of first place.

The Angels had put up some gaudy numbers to be that bad. The team had lost 16 of their last 18 games, powered by an 11-game losing streak, and had already lost the series with the Kansas City Royals going into the final game. These Angels could not hit. They had been shut out seven times, including twice in their most recent four games. More often than not they were held to three or fewer runs. The team was last in the American League in runs scored and second-to-last in team batting average and home runs. If there had once been ethereal entities boosting fly balls into home runs, they seem to have departed when Disney bought the team and redesigned the uniforms—modeled by players throughout this story—which were a blasphemy of mid-90s design excess.

There were injuries, too. First baseman Mo Vaughn signed a six-year, $80-million-dollar contract with the Angels, the biggest contract in baseball, and on his first play in the first game of the 1999 season he tripped on the dugout steps at Edison Field chasing a pop foul and badly sprained his ankle. In early August, Vaughn had just returned when he came down with a fever that was traced back to a staph infection in the ankle.

Right fielder Tim Salmon sprained his wrist. When he returned, the Angels were swept by the first-place Texas Rangers. Shortstop Gary DiSarcina broke a bone in his forearm. When he made it back, the Rangers were waiting, and Anaheim was swept again. At least Texas wasn’t on the schedule when the Angels recovered one of their most important players. Center fielder Jim Edmonds had missed two months after shoulder surgery. He was cleared to resume batting on August 2 and rejoined the team as its designated hitter. Edmonds’ much anticipated debut came and went quickly: He grounded out on the first pitch he saw. The Angels lost, 12-4.

“Everybody thinks we’re going to be great because Jim Edmonds is in the lineup,” manager Terry Collins said. ”It’s going to take him time. It’s not easy to play the game at this level. If there’s one guy who can make it look easy, it’s Jim Edmonds. But it’s not easy.”

The last-place Angels went full-”build for the future” and called up a promising rookie catcher named Bengie Molina (so new that his manager called him “Ben”). Molina was given the start on August 4, his first appearance of the year for the Angels and just his third game overall.

He was stepping into a weird clubhouse. The Angels’ hitters were struggling and anxious. Quality at-bats petered out and the players went to and from the dugout as if on rails, with only a brief wait in the on-deck circle to break it up. Frustrated teammates had begun sniping at each other in the press. Something had to be done, and everything serious had already been tried.

The unserious idea came from Rod Carew. Carew, 54, was in his seventh year as the Angels’ hitting coach. Hall-of-Famers don’t always make good teachers, but Carew had made the transition, described as a “guru” to Angels hitters including Garret Anderson, Salmon, and Edmonds. Seeing his disciples floundering, Carew came up with something new. So new it had never been done before in the history of major league baseball.

Terry Collins learned of the plan only after it was in motion. Before the series finale against the Royals, as the Angels tried to avoid a sweep, Collins overheard the players deliberating.

“I heard somebody say, ‘Can we use one with the tape on it, so I can have a grip?’ I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about.” The manager went over to investigate. “Somebody told me the first time through the lineup they were all going to use the same bat.”

“It was something the hitters talked about last night,” Carew said at the time. “You’ve got to try and change something.” The club needed loosening up, so why not make batting a team effort again, hearkening back to humbler times when nobody got a bat with their name on it.

“We said, ‘Let’s go back to Little League and see what happens,’” second baseman Jeff Huson said. “Just like Little League. If you strike out, just hand it off to the next guy.”

The players were game, but agreeing on the specific bat (To tape, or not to tape… That is the question…) nearly derailed the experiment, until the respected Carew broke the stalemate.

“[The bat] was random,” he told the Hall of Fame in 2016. “I just pulled it out of the bat rack and said, ‘OK guys, we are going to use this bat through the lineup.’ All of the guys were satisfied with the way it felt.”

The chosen bat belonged to Jim Edmonds. It was a black Louisville Slugger 34-32 C271, in the Goldilocks zone for all nine hitters. Or at least eight of them. Rookie Bengie Molina probably didn’t get much of a say. He was going to make his first start of the year with somebody else’s bat.

Collins was read into the plan and gave it his blessing. “All I said was, ‘Well, there better be some hits in that bat.’”

In true 1999 Angels fashion, the plan nearly fell apart immediately. The bat was in leadoff hitter Orlando Palmeiro’s hands when he looked at a called strike three and was rung up by umpire Tim Tschida. In his annoyance, Palmeiro apparently forgot the plan. Instead of handing the bat to number-two hitter Gary DiSarcina, waiting on deck, Palmeiro simply dropped it at home plate, and Tschida didn’t like that at all. Taking the bat-drop as a sign of disrespect, the umpire ejected Palmeiro on the spot.

Palmeiro was stunned. “What are you talking about? Why did you throw me out?”

The outfielder’s teammates and Collins quickly rushed to his defense. DiSarcina explained the arrangement. “I said, ‘Tim, I’m going to use that bat. The whole team is using the bat.’”

The shortstop said this explanation drew “a few expletives” from Tschida, who muttered, “I thought I’d seen it all in this game.”

In the end, the umpire was persuaded of the misunderstanding. DiSarcina recalled him saying, “Well, I’m going to have to do something that I’ve never done before and throw a player back into the game because there’s no reason to throw him out.” Tschida walked away, shaking his head.

“He un-ejected him,” Huson said. “First time I’ve ever seen that. He just waved it off like an inadvertent flag.”

Overhearing the conversation, Chad Kreuter, the Royals’ catcher, was having a hard time keeping up. “He was like, ‘What do you mean you guys are using the same bat?’” DiSarcina said. “He kept asking me, so I finally said, ‘Are you deaf? Yeah, we’re all using the same bat.’”

In permitting Orlando Palmeiro to stay in the game after ejecting him, Tim Tschida contributed his own “first” to the day’s ledger. Even Palmeiro knew it:

Once [the umpires] make the decision, they don’t change it. But it was a misunderstanding. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. It may be a first, but I don’t want to be famous for that.

Before any decisions were subject to replay or challenges, umpire “judgement calls” were final. A strike was a strike, a ball was a ball, a player was safe or a player was out, and a player bounced from the game stayed bounced even if the umpire had second thoughts. It had always been that way. The umpire was never wrong, even when he was. This attitude was essential to maintaining the official’s authority over the game and its participants even after making an obvious mistake. The umpires’ unrepentant confidence is so important that umpire schools train their students to never change their minds and avoid body language suggesting they are even considering it. Any official who can’t master that trick won’t even make it out of Little League in one piece.

When it came to ejections, every umpire for more than a hundred years, right or wrong, had stuck to his guns. Until Tim Tschida in 1999. Orlando Palmeiro was the first uniformed player we could find whose ejection had been rescinded. Like it or not, he’d made history.

Facing Royals’ starter Jay Witasick, DiSarcina walked and passed the bat to Garret Anderson. Anderson hit a sharp ground ball that bounced off Witasick’s elbow for a single, suggesting there might indeed be some hits rattling around in the bat.

In the second inning, Chad Kreuter missed an easy pop-out near the first-base dugout for an error, and Darin Erstad used the free swing to hit a single. Jeff Huson singled, and Bengie Molina used the bat to record his first major-league hit, a double that scored a run. Palmeiro, truly living on borrowed time, came up again, and he hit a ball down the left field line that would have dropped harmlessly foul, except Royals left fielder Johnny Damon caught it, allowing Huson to tag and score.

The same lineup that had five hits the day before went 4-for-8 with a walk while sharing Jim Edmonds’ bat. With a lead in place, the others returned to familiar lumber, but Molina opted to carry on. He singled in two more runs in the fourth, chasing Witasick from the game. He singled again in the fifth, to intensifying applause.

“We haven’t had a lot to clap about lately,” Collins said. “We needed something to break the tension.”

“They ended up having fun with it,” Carew said. “Some of them used the same bat twice in the game. They started swinging good and they were happy. Someone said, ‘That one’s for the coach!’ I thought, ‘I’ll take anything that gets us hits.’”

None of the claps or hits went to Jim Edmonds, who was struggling in his return from injury. “I guess we took all the hits out before he got them,” Huson said. That, or his wand had simply chosen another wizard. After the game ended in a 4-3 Angels victory, the outfielder gifted the bat to Molina.

The Angels won again on August 5, thrashing the Boston Red Sox, 8-0. Molina had another two hits and two more RBIs. And after that…the team lost seven straight games. Anaheim was a bad team, and no stunt was going to change that. Anything could happen in a single game, but over the long season, reality usually won out.

But the eternal promise of baseball is that anything might happen, including any number of things you haven’t seen, and maybe something that no one has witnessed. That night featured two remarkable firsts, curiosities that stand out long after most of the 1999 Angels season has been rightly forgotten.

“I’ve never seen a team use one bat before,” Collins said. “But then again, I’ve never seen anyone get thrown out, then get to get back in, either.”

One of the wonderful things about the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is its appreciation that, in a game built of routines, the strange is special, even precious. Hearing that one team had shared a single bat, the museum quickly placed a call to Edison Field in Anaheim, offering to take that bat and put it under glass where it belonged.

“The decision was, should Bengie keep the bat for personal reasons or should he have us all sign it and send it to the Hall of Fame?” DiSarcina recalled in 2016. “Bengie ended up letting the Hall of Fame have it.”

“It was a fun thing,” Rod Carew said. “They had fun. It turned out to be a big deal.” A flight of fancy worthy of Cooperstown, and worth remembering.

Along with the cautionary tale of those late 1990s Angels uniforms. Hideous.

We chose our words carefully in describing Orlando Palmeiro’s brush with history. He was absolutely the first person in uniform to be ejected and returned to action, but he was not the first banished party to be allowed back on the field. That honor goes to Youppi!, mascot for the Montreal Expos, and when he made that history, he was wearing his pajamas.

As we are quickly approaching the 37th anniversary of Youppi’s landmark accomplishment, let’s give that story the Project 3.18 treatment next week.

On August 17: “The Mascot Wars”

Over on Clear the Field

Continuing an inadvertent “flapping” motif, Ted and I have officially entered the “all-video” era of our baseball storytelling podcast, and we kicked things off with a look back at Dave Winfield’s 1983 close encounter with a ring-billed gull.

The listen-only options are still there (and I don’t blame you) but for those who’d like to watch, enjoy some choice images (and perhaps some video snippets in the future), we’re here for you. And we’re also on YouTube.

Wherever you watch or listen, if you enjoy the show, please follow us and take a second to leave a rating. We need our angels, too!

Welcome to Project 3.18, where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.

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One of the things we’re proud of here at Project 3.18 is our series of deep-dives into the checkered history of major league baseball’s forfeits. Baseball has been forfeit-free for nearly 50 years, but back in the late 19th- and early 20th centuries, you could hardly go a year without a game falling apart in interesting ways. There’s a lot of dust these stories, but we blow that off and often find a tale that remains remarkably legible more than a century later.

In the middle of July 1916, two National League teams, the visitors from Brooklyn and the home team from Chicago played a four-game series in a ballpark on the city’s North Side.

The Brooklyn club was technically called the Robins, named after their well-loved manager, Wilbert Robinson, but also referred by older names: the Dodgers or even the Superbas.

A manager-derived nickname was something of a custom at the time, so the Cubs had one, too, unofficially. Their manager was Joe Tinker, so in 1916 the Cubs were often called “the Tinx.”

Tinker had recently pulled of the impressive feat of changing teams without having to move his office. In 1914, Charles Weeghman set up Chicago’s entry in a new, rival major league, the Federal League. Tinker became that team’s player-manager. He was one of the first “stars” to join the new league and his move inspired others to follow. The “Chi Feds” finished first in first place and outdrew the Cubs and the White Sox in 1914, a show of strength that hurried along a “peace settlement” that dissolved the Federal League after 1915. In the agreement, Weeghman was given the opportunity to buy the Chicago Cubs and merge the two teams, putting Tinker back in the uniform of his glory days.

In the early 1910s, “Tinker to Evers to Chance” became one of the most famous scraps of baseball poetry in America, to the extent that even casual fans today probably recognize it. Six years later, the players immortalized in Franklin Pierce Adams’ poem, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” were scattered. First baseman Frank Chance was managing in the Pacific Coast League. Second baseman Johnny Evers managed the Cubs in 1913 and was traded to the Boston Braves, where he remained a productive player until 1917. Only Tinker remained in Chicago.

The visiting Dodgers (we’re going to call them Dodgers for consistency purposes) were proof that times had changed. Brooklyn was a doormat during Chicago’s run in the early aughts, the Dodgers were in first place that July and on their way to their first World Series appearance. Their previous pennant, won in 1900, predated not just the World Series but also the existence of the American League.

Thomas Rice, the baseball writer for the Brooklyn Eagle, where he went by “Rice” (including the quotes), was traveling with the Dodgers on their long road trip, and he provided detailed (if not exactly neutral) accounts of the doings at Chicago’s North Side park, Weeghman Park. The series began on July 15 with a walk-off win for the Cubs. Catcher Jimmy Archer hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth. Weeghman had taken to motivating his mediocre team with instant bonuses for outstanding performances, and he reportedly wrote Archer a check “before he could get his uniform off.”

The next day, the Cubs were down 4-1 in the bottom of the ninth. All seemed lost, but Chicago pieced together three runs against a parade of Dodger pitchers and sent the game into extras.

The Dodgers “girded up their loins” and manufactured three runs in the top of the tenth. Back came the Cubs, scoring three more runs with a “fury that drove 16,000 rooters into paroxysms of delight.”

After that, nobody could score. It began to get dark somewhere in the 14th inning, but the umpires, Ernie Quigley and Bill Byron, let play continue until many in the crowd (who could no longer see the game) were calling for mercy. In the 16th inning Byron’s voice pierced the gloom and declared a 7-7 tie.

In the top of the 16th, with a runner on first, the Cubs’ pitcher, Hippo Vaughn, bunted weakly in front of home plate. Thinking the umpire, Byron, would call it foul, Vaughn didn’t move. Nor did the runner at first. Byron called it fair and despite some sloppy defense, the Dodgers doubled off two Cubs who had hardly budged.

The Cubs,“roaring and raving,” protested Byron’s decision, and their performance triggered a response from the grandstand crowd, some of whom threw their seat cushions onto the field in disgust or solidarity. But there were more dangerous missiles flying, too: Glass pop bottles, including one aimed in the general direction of Quigley, the field umpire, like a warning shot. In his write-up for the Eagle, Rice blamed the Cubs and their histrionics for inciting the fans:

Some day the childish, idiotic, boneheaded kicking by the Cubs is going to cause a riot in this town and an umpire is going to be seriously injured.

On July 17, a much tighter game was played at Weeghman Park, dominated by Brooklyn’s starting pitcher, Wheezer Dell, who helped put on a pitching clinic and helped his cause with a fourth-inning single that drove in a decisive run.

Afterward, Rice spotlighted more nonsense from the Cubs. As they took their final at-bats in the ninth, “the entire Cub outfit acted like maniacs,” tossing bats around and beating them against the sides and top of the dugout. The noise might have rattled Dell, who walked a batter and inspired the Cubs’ bench mob to get even louder.

That was enough for the umpires. At least one bench rabble-rouser was ejected by Quigley, working home plate, and soon Byron approached the Cubs’ dugout, where he was “greeted with abuse and a lemon.” As the two sides argued, a hurled seat cushion caught Quigley full in the face. The officials kept their focus on the players and eventually cleared the Cubs’ bench and finished the game.

The series was tied, 1-1-1, going into July 18 . It was a Tuesday afternoon game, with 5,500 people in the stands. Ernie Quigley umpired the field and Bill Byron worked behind home plate.

George McConnell started for the Cubs and Rube Marquard for the Dodgers. The Cubs nibbled away at Marquard, scoring runs in the second, third, and fourth to open a 4-0 lead. In the sixth inning Marquard was subbed out for a pinch-hitter, a move that keyed a 4-run rally off of McConnell and another Cubs pitcher. Tinker was forced to bring in the trusted Hippo Vaughn, who got out of it with a double play. The teams seemed spent by their back-and-forth, and the game was tied 4-4 entering the 10th inning.

In the top of the 10th, Hi Myers, leading off for Brooklyn, reached second base when the Cubs threw his routine groundout past first base. The next batter, Jimmy Johnston, safely bunted, sending Myers to third, and Johnson stole second. With no outs, the batter was Brooklyn shortstop Ollie O’Mara.

During O’Mara’s at-bat, the Cubs made a pretty daring attempt to pick off Myers, who had come noticeably far off the bag there. The resulting play was close, but Myers slid back, “on his face” around the third baseman and reached back to touch the bag before getting tagged. Quigley called Myers safe.

According to Rice, the umpire’s decision triggered “the usual rowdy rumpus by the Cubs.” As the Chicago players “beefed and raved and tore around,” Rice saw a seat cushion shoot past Bill Byron’s head, sailing almost to the mound. Byron went to the Cubs’ bench, where he was greeted by more cushions, but he was able to silence the players. He returned to the plate and told Vaughn to get on with it.

With a 2-2 count, Vaughn stepped off the mound. He complained that Johnston, on second, had the Cubs’ signs. “I had to go slow,” Vaughn said. “The signals were being tipped off to O’Mara, and we were trying to work up a new set.”

Byron was not moved by Vaughn’s difficulties and was surely worn out from the copious piles of beef the Cubs had been dumping all over Charles Weeghman’s jewel box throughout the series. He now reached his limit.

Vaughn continued to “dilly-dally” around the mound and Ollie O’Mara began leaving the batter’s box in kind. Byron warned Vaughn that he was delaying the game and reminded him that if he did not pitch, the umpire could call an automatic ball.

And that was true. Baseball’s pace of play was already a concern in the deadball era, when a two-and-a-half-hour game was considered an abomination, “outraging faithful housewives by keeping husbands at ballparks while dinners grew cold,” in the explanation of one writer at the time. To hurry along sluggish pitchers, who added most empty minutes, the leagues adopted Rule 33, which said:

The umpire shall call a ball on the pitcher each time he delays the game by failing to deliver the ball to the batsman for a period longer than 20 seconds.

A good rule in principle, but it never worked in practice because the umpires saw themselves as judges, not police. They hated being tasked with what was essentially police work and frequently just looked the other way.

After Byron threatened to invoke Rule 33, the Cubs’ shortstop, Heinie Zimmerman, who had been in the thick of the protests all through the series, yelled at Byron to get back behind the catcher and “empire de game.” Instead, Byron counted to 20 and called, “Ball three.”

Rice said the Cubs charged around Byron “as if he had set fire to an orphanage.” The writer watched, unsurprised, as the Cubs howled unprintable curses while “many more cushions shot out of the grandstand.” The writer said Joe Tinker was in the vanguard, “leading the yelps.”

The Cubs were objecting to what they saw as Byron’s inconsistent application of the rules. All day long pitchers from both sides had exceeded their 20-second allotment, but the umpire never so much as twitched, until now. Tinker was furious, and he “protested so vehemently” that Byron “ordered him to the shower.”

The ejected manager refused to move, but rather than wait for him to simmer down, Byron motioned to a startled police officer, seemingly the only one in the ballpark, and ordered the man to remove the Cubs’ manager.

The surprised officer nervously approached the party at home plate, but Heinie Zimmerman intercepted him and advised him that, as field manager, Tinker was in charge and could not be forcibly thrown out. The officer seemed glad to accept this reasoning.

“All right,” Byron told the cop. “I call you as a witness, then. I have no protection, as the rules prescribe I should have. I am going to allow three minutes to take Tinker away or for Tinker to take himself away. If neither happens, I am going to declare the game forfeited.”

And then he took out his watch.

William Jeremiah Byron had several nicknames, too. Called “Bill” to his face, many people called him “Lord” behind his back, a nod to the 19th century British poet and a reference to the umpire’s highborn demeanor. The nod to a poet was especially fitting because Byron had a penchant for verse. He was famous for singing his ball/strike calls for the benefit of a crowd, and he was apparently even something of a poet himself. Whenever a batter protested after being struck out looking, Byron offered him a little rhyme:

Let me tell you something, friend
Before you grow much older–
You cannot improve your average, sir,
With the bat upon your shoulder.

Even before coming to the major leagues in 1913, Byron was known as one of the most imperious and confrontational umpires in professional baseball. He became the subject of intense loathing and abuse from fans, but didn’t seem to care. In 1916, umpires were just one generation removed from the two-fisted game of the 19th century, when some officials kept order by challenging unruly players to fights—and winning them. Byron was a throwback to those days. No one used the term “ump show” in 1916, but here was an original performer, a man who never walked when he could strut.

He was also famously trigger-happy: Byron led the NL with 24 ejections in 1916. The AL leader, Dick Nallin, had 11. He had a song for ejections, too. When a player approached the red zone, Byron would take out his brush and dust off the plate while singing “Someone’s going to the clubhouse…” When the line was inevitably crossed, the verse changed slightly: “Someone IS going to the clubhouse!”

And then there was that pocket watch. Byron was far from the only umpire to keep and produce a watch, but he often waved that watch like a red flag in front of an already angry bull and usually got a similar response. There is a reason Byron only umpired seven years in the majors before being “sent down” to work in the minors. Even the National League officials, it seems, did not enjoy watching Lord Byron’s ump show.

As Byron grandly studied his watch amid a sprinkle of seat cushions, Joe Tinker kept screaming, repeating over and over that Byron “didn’t have the nerve to call a forfeit.” Rice, who obviously took the umpire’s side in the conflict, said this was Tinker’s “prize bone play of the season.” Despite being in Byron’s corner, Rice called him “entirely devoid of tact.” He would certainly have the nerve to forfeit a game, and precisely three minutes later, he did, turning to address the crowd and giving Brooklyn an administrative victory.

The forfeit dropped the Cubs from fifth place to seventh in the eight-team National League. League rules stipulated that the Cubs organization would be fined $1,000 and their manager would automatically be fined $100—there were even stiffer penalties if Charles Weeghman tried to cover Tinker’s fine himself.

Tinker said relatively little after the game, other than that the Dodgers were stealing signs and he planned to appeal the forfeit and fines to John Tener, the National League president. Thomas Rice threw the gauntlet down in front of Tener in his typically colorful prose:

Perhaps Tener was not a good swimmer, because not only did he uphold the Cubs’ fines on July 27, he issued several warnings to Cubs players, Heinie Zimmerman in particular, that they would spend the rest of the season under special surveillance. The president made a tour of all eight clubs to impress upon them that he was not kidding. If a player’s name showed up in an unflattering report from an umpire, suspension letters would fly.

Wrapping up his coverage of the stormy series, Rice theorized that Tinker, at the cusp of retiring as a player and trying to prove himself in the National League, was trying to cover up for the Cubs’ shortcomings “with bluff and bluster.” The team’s rowdy tactics were really Tinker’s campaign “of noise and intimidation to prove what a striver he is.”

But a forfeit was the opposite of success. It was a loss by fiat, a self-induced rake in the face. Whatever Tinker thought of his stand at home plate, in giving a game away, Rice said he had “fallen to the ridiculous.”

“And when a man does that, his goose is cooked.”

Just a few days after the forfeit, Tinker almost showed his cards. During a late-July series against the Cardinals, he gave Bill Klem, the NL’s senior umpire, a piece of his mind. These remarks were extensively quoted in national newspapers, perhaps because he’d also sent them in a letter to President Tener and shared the contents of that letter with the press:

Baseball is distinctly a fighting game, a red-blooded man’s game, a battle, a game of strife, and you remove that element and you ruin the game.

The Cubs could never have won the game from the Giants in New York in 1908, the game that gave them a pennant and made it possible for them to win the world’s championship, had the umpires possessed the power they have this year and used it. The Cubs were a fighting ball team and they won the game through sheer grit and nerve.

If a player objects to a decision, the umpires today threaten him with a fine if he persists. The players come back to the bench after a strike has been called or after they have gone out in a questionable play, and I ask them about it.

‘No, I wasn’t out,’ they will say. ‘Yes, the ball he called foul was fair,’ or ‘No, it wasn’t a strike.’

‘Well, you didn’t say anything?’

‘No, I have no desire to pay any part of the expenses of the National League,’ is the reply, and I can’t blame the players, for they are right.

In reaching back to the hallowed bygones of 1908 and lamenting the tyranny of modern-day umpires, Tinker was inadvertently signaling defeat. He and his generation had thrived in baseball’s teenage years, when strife and rebellion helped the game mature into an American cultural power. But the game had matured, and its field managers needed to grow up as well. The stars of the future would have to find a way to thrive on that stage without abusing the umpires—even the most obnoxious ones—and weaponizing the crowd. In his comments, Joe Tinker was admitting he didn’t know how to help them do that.

The manager’s goose was roasted, rotisserie style, over the rest of the season. His team won just 67 games, a major disappointment for the club that got to combine the best parts of the back-to-back pennant-winning Whales and the once-mighty Cubs. Tinker’s three-year contract, the one that had lured him to the Federal League in the first place, was up, and an influential member of the Cubs’ board of directors, William Wrigley Jr., pushed the organization to go in a different direction.

In 1931, a retired Joe Tinker mentioned the forfeit in an autobiographical series of newspaper articles, titled, of course, “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” He recalled Byron ejecting him by saying, “You are going right out through that hole there in the players’ dugout.”

“I lost my head completely,” Tinker wrote. “I told him, ‘If I go, we will all go together.’” He said he quickly realized what a foolish attitude this was, but it was too late: A few months later the Cubs announced a new manager/president, Fred Mitchell. Tinker never managed in the major leagues again.

He called the forfeit “one of the worst bones I ever pulled in baseball,” and linked it directly to the end of his time as a big-league manager. In the end, he had gone out alone, just as Lord Byron had decreed.

Episode Highlights:

- What’s a gull? Canada edition

- Exhibition Stadium, scene of the crime (?)

- Dave Winfield throws and a life is “pffft” out, but what really happened?

- A Canadian Inspector Javert and his pinstriped Valjean

- The Toronto justice system wakes up with a bevy of regrets

- A forensic examination turns the case upside-down

- Winfield makes amends and Toronto comes around on bird population control

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On June 15, 1976, it rained in Houston. Thirteen inches of rain in about 13 hours. The kind of weather people still talk about 50 years later.

No place in the world could gracefully handle that much rain in such a short timespan. Bayous around the city overflowed and the water reached five feet in depth in some areas, especially the southeast part of Houston, where ambulance crews drove and then swam.

At 5:00 p.m., the Pittsburgh Pirates’ chartered bus left their hotel. It took the bus a half-hour, three times longer than usual, to make it to the Astrodome, but they got there. The Astros players made it in as well. While the teams got dressed and warmed up, Houston’s drainage capacity was overwhelmed and the water began pooling where it fell. Roads and freeways filled up. Many stalled vehicles were abandoned. One of those cars had tried and failed to bring the night’s umpires to the Astrodome.

A sportswriter named Gary Taylor tried driving to the stadium and gave up three hours later, abandoning his car to shelter in a cafe where the owner mopped ankle-high water out the front door and illegally served beer from his personal stock to several dozen stranded motorists, 50 cents a bottle.

Two hours and an unspecified number of bottles later, Taylor returned to his car to find the torrential water had relocated it from curbside to the precipice of a nearby drainage ditch. “Traffic on the streets and highways was unbelievable,” Taylor said. Working vehicles had to pick around cars “strewn at all angles across all lanes of traffic, abandoned by the thousands.”

Approximately 20 fans, “die-hards” taking that label far too literally, somehow navigated this post-apocalyptic traffic and showed up at the Astrodome. Conditions were reportedly “bone dry” inside the stadium, but its parking lots flooded, taking out many of the Houston players’ cars, at least for the night. Some ended up sleeping in their clubhouse.

The Astrodome had a chance to set a dubious record and host the smallest official crowd in major league baseball history (pre-COVID era), but the lack of umpires was a problem and the game lost half its viewing audience when the production truck responsible for beaming the game back to Pittsburgh packed up and fled while it still could. The players were in uniform and ready to go, but at approximately 7:15 p.m., 20 minutes before first-pitch, the game inside the Astrodome was postponed due to rain.

“We could have played,” Astros general manager Tal Smith said, “but if we announced the game was on, we would have been inviting misfortune. Many people would have tried to make it and would have become stranded.”

The two-dozen fans sheltering in the dome got a collector’s dream of a rain check and a free meal in the facility’s cafeteria. The players were treated to a picnic feast. Astrodome officials set up tables in the outfield behind second base and served both teams fried chicken and steak in the middle of the deserted “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

“The Pirates and Astros are sitting down to supper,” a team official said, eager to show off the Astrodome’s mastery of the elements. “It’s not exactly a rainout. It’s a rain-in.”

The festivities were slightly marred by one of the more ridiculous freak injuries in a game full of them. When the proverbial dinner bell rang, Pirates backup first baseman Bob Robertson was so eager to tuck in that he vaulted over a railing from the seating area onto the AstroTurf playing surface, landing wrong on his left ankle and tearing several ligaments.

The storms passed, the water drained, and on June 16 the teams concluded their Houston series with a 6-3 Pirates win. The teams had pushed back their scheduled starters. Doc Medich started that game for Pittsburgh while 22-year-old lefthander John Candelaria, in his first full season in the major leagues, got bumped back to Pittsburgh.

After an off-day on June 17, Candelaria and the Pirates beat…the Houston Astros, who had accompanied the Pirates back east. That series was shortened, too—the game on June 19, at uncovered Three Rivers Stadium, was rained out the old-fashioned way.

In 1982, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome became the indoor home of the Minnesota Twins. The Metrodome replaced Metropolitan Stadium, an open-air ballpark that had helped lure the Senators away from Washington in 1961.

While the Astrodome provided necessary protection from Texas’ subtropical heat, the Metrodome had to protect people from all four of Minnesota’s ferocious seasons. To do that, the building incorporated some cutting-edge technology, none more amazing than the roof, which was essentially a big balloon.

The air-supported roof was an engineering marvel. Two layers of fabric—an outer skin of Teflon 1/32 of an inch thick and an inner fiberglass liner 1/64 of an inch thick—were separated by a void of pressurized air that acted as cheap, all-purpose insulation. Ten acres of fabric weighing more than a million pounds were kept aloft by a sophisticated system of 20 fans that pushed 250,000 cubic feet of air inside the dome every minute.

By late April 1986, the last of winter had passed in the upper Midwest, not that that mattered to the all-weather Twins, who were hosting the California Angels. John Candelaria had been traded to the Angels in 1985, but he was injured early the following season, dealing with an elbow issue that would soon require corrective surgery. Pre-operation, Candelaria was along for the ride on this particular road trip.

Amid the wettest April ever, another storm front was moving through southeast Minnesota on April 26, with heavy rains and strong winds expected. The positive-pressure inside the Metrodome could be calibrated based on the conditions outside, and the facility managers heeded the forecast and set the fan system to prepare for 35 mile-per-hour winds.

Thirty-two thousand fans, the second-largest crowd of the year, were inside the Metrodome that night, watching Twins starter Frank Viola face the Angels’ abrasive Don Sutton. But there was something eerie about enjoying a pastoral game in an enclosed space while the roof quivered under the fury of the unseen storm overhead. Early in the game, pitcher Bill Latham and the Twins’ bullpen considered what they’d do if the roof came down as the structure overhead rattled uncomfortably: “Mark Portugal said he’d crawl under the bullpen bench. But we finally decided we’d haul it for the dugout.”

And haul they would. During the eighth inning, a measuring device on top of the Metrodome roof showed that a jump in the storm’s intensity, from approximately 12 miles per hour to 80 miles per hour in “an instant.”

The atmospheric equivalent of a haymaker slammed into the east side of the soft-bodied roof and distorted it so much that a piece of the inner liner tore off the frame and drooped above the second-level seats in right field. The overhead light banks and speakers swayed wildly as the roof began to deflate. Seeing 10,000 pounds of electrical rigging dancing was enough for the Twins’ bullpen to put their plan in motion. After that, “we were on our way to the dugout,” Latham said.

As the roof lost its shape, a series of emergency plugs popped open to mitigate the water pooling on top. Gravity guided the water down and out through permanent holes in the inner roof—and onto the heads of some unlucky fans along the third base line, whose tickets had not reflected the possibility of cataract views.

The Twins’ Mickey Hatcher was batting when the ceiling began to sag. He turned to Bob Boone, the Angels’ catcher. “Boone, does the ceiling look like it’s going to fall?”

Bob Boone gave the situation in right field a careful appraisal. “Yeah, it sure does,” he said finally.

The little-used Hatcher said he wasn’t surprised to find his at-bat interrupted by structural collapse. “That’s just the way the season’s been going for me.”

The Metrodome public address announcer read pre-prepared instructions asking fans in the upper deck to evacuate into the concourse in an orderly fashion. Most people managed to keep their cool.

Meanwhile, the facilities team discovered something of a technological misunderstanding. The wind spike hit the Metrodome so hard that the computer regulating the interior pressure detected the extra pressure and decided to shut off some of the fans to compensate. But the temporary wind pressure was on the wrong side of the dome, and without the fans, the roof began to deflate. Once the fans were cranked back up, the roof regained its shape in just nine minutes.

Stadium officials informed umpire crew chief Ken Kaiser that play could resume. Kaiser had misgivings, but he gave the go-ahead. “I figured we had just a few outs to go and it looked like everything was safe again. To tell you the truth, we don’t have this kind of thing in New York, where I come from.”

Playing closest to the busted flap, the right fielders were leery. “I kept my eyes on the speakers above me,” Minnesota’s Tom Brunansky said. “I made sure I was standing between them, so I would have a good head start when they came down.”

The Angels’ Wally Joyner was particularly reluctant to return to work in right field. “I wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want the ceiling to fall on us. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought the umpires were going to call the game and that was perfectly fine with me.”

Frank Viola had been playing the Angels like a you-know-what before the interruption, and the Twins had a 5-1 lead when play resumed. Minnesota added another run but then Viola gave up a two-run home-run in the ninth and his replacement, Ron Davis, gave up two more two-run home runs, leaving Twins fans more deflated than the building. Wally Joyner conquered his fear and hit a cinematic go-ahead shot to take a 7-6 lead that held up.

The next day, Gene Mauch, the Angels’ manager, likened that ninth inning comeback to a modernized version of The Natural:

We were talking about how we would take this script to somebody and they’d say, “Sure [Joyner] did. Sure he hit a home run with two outs and a 3-2 pitch and the lightning’s flashing and the lights are swaying. Sure he did. Go sell that crap somewhere else.”

On June 27, 1991, a “flash storm” passed through Montreal, Quebec, knocking out power and knocking down trees. The winds of up to 100 km/h (you do your own conversions with this international story) were particularly hard on Olympic Stadium and its retractable roof—the most visually striking roof in the history of sports.

We never had the chance to see a Montreal Expos game at Olympic Stadium, and maybe that’s for the best, because few ballpark images give us the heebie-jeebies more than these shots, taken by a capable amateur photographer as Olympic Stadium’s Kevlar-fabric roof was lowered from its perch in the overhead tower and spread over the uncovered bowl of the playing area. Our first thought was, “Nope,” and now we know where filmmaker Jordan Peele surely got his inspiration for the otherworldly flying monster in his film of the same name.

Olympic Stadium was the obligatory architectural flex that accompanied Montreal’s successful bid for the 1976 Summer Olympics. After the world went home, the plan was to move the Expos from Jarry Park Stadium to the gently-used, state-of-the-art sports megaplex left over from the games.

The stadium and its over-complicated roof were designed by a French architect, Roger Taillibert, and while the roof visuals would be striking, to say the least, other architects warned that the untried system of pulleys and cables was a taxpayer-funded dice-roll to the tune of $154 million (Canadian).

Montreal bit off a little more than it could chew with its pièce de résistance. The stadium’s iconic slanted tower wasn’t completed in time for the games, and with no place to hook it to, the retractable roof couldn’t be installed. Instead, it sat in a warehouse in Marseille, France for five years, racking up $1.25 million in storage fees, just a sliver of the largesse and waste that contributed to Olympic Stadium’s eventual $770 million price tag. The roof eventually reached Quebec and was stored at the stadium. For several years, the structure’s roof was stored in the basement.

The roof was finally installed in June 1989. A month later, just a day before the roof was to be ceremonially dedicated, a storm over Montreal called it into service, except officials didn’t get it down quickly enough and by the time they wanted it closed, the winds were too high. Instead, the Expos had to do as they’d always done and wait for the weather to clear. In November of that year, 8,000 attendees at a truck and tractor pull were evacuated when a roof lowering went bad and left rips in the lining several metres1 long.

Two years later, the roof was working and used sparingly, mainly to guarantee indoor spaces for trade shows and other money-making rentals. The Expos kept the roof open as much as they could, to avoid difficulties from the low height of the ceiling when it was closed. The roof was closed on June 27, 1991, when that “flash storm” pushed through the area. The damage across the city was minor, but Tailibert’s Kevlar flower was shredded.

Huge gashes were torn above right field, each triangular hole about 30 to 45 metres wide. The sky was plainly visible through the gashes and any protection the roof still provided was outweighed by the risk of further debris separating and falling into the stadium below. The cable system seemed intact, so the morning after the storm, the engineers coaxed the broken roof back into its lifted position, where it was secure enough to allow the night’s game against the Pirates (there they are again) to proceed.

Claude Brochu, the Expos owner, was a pragmatic man: “We’re not concerned at all about the ripped roof,” he said. “From our point of view it doesn’t matter if the thing’s up two days, two weeks, two months—however long it is. We’re considering the ballpark to be like any other open-air facility.”

That week, a new entry appeared on the Expos’ list of injured players, prepared by the team publicist, Rich Griffin. “Kevlar Roof” had been added, his status reported as “left hanging.”

He was still up there when the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers came to Montreal on July 11, up five games in the National League West and winners of 7 of their last 9. The Dodgers’ pitching staff was second-to-none, led by Mike Morgan, Ramón Martínez, and Tim Belcher. This was a staff on which Orel Hershiser, 7-2 with a 3.46 ERA, was the number-five starter.

Down at the bottom of the Dodgers’ rarely used bullpen was 37-year-old John Candelaria. By 1991, Candelaria was well into his third decade in major league baseball, building up a journeyman’s resume worthy of your Immaculate Grid consideration. In between the Angels and the Dodgers, Candelaria pitched for six other teams, but he did not pitch in the first two games of the series, both of which ended in one-run Expos victories, sending spirits in Montreal soaring.

It rained on the night of July 13. Nothing awe-inducing, just gray skies and steady showers. It was the perfect night for a retractable roof, but the orange umbrella above Olympic Stadium wasn’t going anywhere. Kevlar Roof had been transferred to the 60-day DL, and the question was not when he would return, but whether he ever would. Repairs were estimated at $1.5 million over seven weeks and a total replacement remained a worst-case possibility. These were problems for the offseason.

“Our poor roof,” Montreal pitcher Tim Burke said. “It sure has spent a lot of time on the disabled list.” In fact, Olympic Stadium’s initial roof was only opened 88 times in its entire existence.

The teams waited under cover for several hours before making the decision to postpone. It was the first weather-related postponement at Olympic Stadium since 1986, several years before the roof was installed. We didn’t know Quebec had such excellent summer weather.

The Sunday finale became a Sunday doubleheader. The Dodgers’ Bob Ojeda shook his head. “You know how tough it is to take doubleheaders.” He looked up at the Expos broken umbrella, folded high overhead while the rain went on. “Even when the thing worked, it didn’t work.”

Burke agreed. “It seems to have been a mistake from the start.”

Mutterings about the Expos’ future were already audible in 1991. A long run of second-division finishes had dampened the spirit of what had once been an enthusiastic fanbase, and being a renter in a nine-figure national boondoggle hadn’t helped.

Mitch Webster, an outfielder who’d spent parts of three seasons with Montreal before being paroled to Los Angeles, said mismanagement was a big part of what ailed the Expos. “This has really got to make the taxpayers upset. At this point, if they lost this franchise, I don’t think it would make too many people mad.”

A Los Angeles Times writer named Bill Plaschke chatted with John Candelaria, just passing the time during the delay before the game was postponed. Candelaria had begun his career before the institution of free agency existed, and since then he’d been almost everywhere and seen everything. Still, Plaschke could hardly believe it when Candelaria mentioned that this was not his first run-in with precipitation inside a domed stadium. Or his second. “Now I’ve got three under my belt.”

The Expos won both games on Sunday, sweeping the four-game series away from the favored Dodgers. Sunday’s games became a sun-washed party, and Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette said that the roof, “dangling like a wounded bird from its perch on the tower,” was better off where it was. If the team had lowered it for Saturday’s rain, Sunday’s game would have been played indoors. Instead, “the stadium rocked and rolled through 18 innings of sunlit baseball.”

“Trust me,” Todd said of the roof, “no one missed it.”

Today’s post spins off of our recent series on baseball’s best alliterative names. When we got to the letter “P”, there weren’t many contenders, but one name caught our eye.

Clarke Alonzo Pittenger was born in 1899. His formative years were spent mainly in Toledo, Ohio, and baseball doesn’t seem to have been a big part of his childhood picture there. Instead, Pittenger starred at basketball, playing forward at Waite High School and Toledo College, interrupted by a brief and timely enlistment in the United States Army. As luck would have it, World War I ended before Private Pittenger got anywhere near a troop ship, and he was discharged, free to return to school and sports.

By 1919, Pittenger was a two-sport athlete. He had discovered professional baseball and was good enough at it to be signed by a Class B team based in London, Ontario, the Tecumsahs. He hit above .300 in two seasons there and showed his fast-break speed on the basepaths. In the winter of 1919. he was also playing basketball, for an industrial team in Toledo. In a report on the team’s status that December, Pittenger was mentioned by a different name:

Suey Welch … has signed “Pinky” Pittenger for his basketball squad, declared by Toledo sports writers as the greatest play in that section of the country.

“Pinky,” eh?

Read more

This Week’s Lineup:

- Pete Crow-Amstrong’s Interview Range

- Walker on Walker at the Home Run Derby

- Muncy v. Muncy and a story of the time Connie Mack made his own pair of Socks

- Chase DeLauter, mountain mama?

- Marlins say “no-no” to Eury Perez’s perfecto

What’s This?

Every few weeks in “Slap Hits,” Ted and I cover whatever has delighted us from present-day baseball (or sometimes things even further afield) in a lightning round.

There will be news (of a kind), opinion, banter when we agree, and arguing when we don’t. We’re looking at items big and small, obscure or viral, we’re going quick, and we’re not stopping to fact-check.

Got a Slap Hit?

Send us an amusing, baseball adjacent item (interpretation is up to you) you’d like us to mention, bonus points for weird and obscure. Listen to a few episodes of “Slap Hits” and you’ll get the sense of what we like to cover, and it’s often things that don’t get covered elsewhere that delight us the most. If we use it, we’ll credit you for the submission during the show!

Email tips and suggestions to clearthefieldpod@gmail.com or leave a comment here on the episode.

Welcome to Project 3.18, where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.

If you enjoy what you read today, please subscribe to receive our free feature stories in your inbox. And if you’ve been here for a while, we could really use your support as a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers receive access to exclusive content and help keep this publication going and growing.

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This is the second half of a whole-alphabet piece featuring outstanding alliterative player names. Project 3.18 is making the tough choices, handing out flowers, and calling out a serious lack of effort by the N’s.

Here’s the first part, in case you missed it:

M: 190 names

The most loaded letter of the alphabet.

Hall-of-Famers: Mickey Mantle, Minnie Minoso, Mike Mussina

Honorable Mention: Mason Miller, Michael Mimbs, Mike Minor

Runners-up: The Moxies

Moxie Manuel—Marquis (or Mark) Garfield Manuel was an ambidextrous pitcher who played for the Chicago White Sox in 1908. “Moxie” was a childhood nickname, earned for unspecified gutsy antics, climbing trees, eating bugs, that sort of thing. One of Manuel’s gutsier White Sox performances led to the “pitcher win” rules as you know them today. In the minor leagues he once tripped over a wheelbarrow playing the outfield and another time he actually hit the cover off a ball. This guy is his own entire post, but in lieu of that I heartily recommend the SABR biography of Mark G. Manuel written by…Mark G. Manuel. That’s a typo, right?

Mox McQuery—William McQuery was an 1880s player who apparently rarely went by the nickname forever assigned to him. He was a good hitter and had an outstanding mustache. After baseball, McQuery became a police officer and died in the line of duty in the year 1900, after being shot during the turn-of-the-century equivalent of a traffic stop gone bad.

Moxie Meixell—It took a village to bring us the purest alliterative name in baseball. It started with Meixell’s parents who purposefully named their child “Merton Merrill.” Later, Meixell’s friends or teammates gilded that lily with a fitting nickname. The result is an MMMM moniker that is both pleasingly snappy and a tongue-twister, depending on your needs.

Meixell played in three games for the 1912 Cleveland Naps. He took two at-bats, made one hit, and disappeared back into the minor leagues and obscurity, but if anyone deserves to have his name remembered on its own merits, make mine Moxie Meixell.

Winners: The Muncys

It’s fair to say that most of us missed the Golden Age of player names, an era that ended on June 15, 1958, when the last player ever to go by “Rube,” Rube Walker, took his last at-bat in the majors.

But the present has its wonders, too. All of us, right now, are living in the Muncy Age, when two different players named Max Muncy are active, playing the same position—third base—for California teams and having the same birth date, 12 years apart. These are the only two Muncys (or Munci?) in baseball history, and on June 29 of this year, they faced off in the major leagues for the first time, and third baseman Max Muncy hit a ground ball to third baseman Max Muncy. Wonders.

N: 90 names

Not a lot going on with N, which was a surprise and a disappointment.

Runners-up: Nick Neugebauer, Nelson Norman

Winner: Nyls Nyman

Nyls (pronounced “Niles”) Nyman Jr. wins a lackluster category. The White Sox outfielder’s mid-1970s career was derailed by shoulder injuries for which there were no treatments at the time. As far as I can tell, no one ever called him “Nails.”

O: 7 names

Runners-up: Ossie Orwoll, Ozzie Osborn1

Winner: Orval Overall

The name my podcast partner Ted was sure I was making up. Orval Overall was a big-time curveball pitcher for the 1900s Chicago Cubs, the Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance championship teams which were all the North Side had to hold onto for more than a century. Overall’s given name needed no embellishment by his teammates, but the 6’ 2”, 214-pound pitcher was sometimes dubbed “Big Groundhog.” Can you guess the date he was born on?

P: 33 names

Runners-up: Parson Perryman, Pretzel Pezzullo, Pid Purdy

Winner: Pinky Pittenger

A 1977 obituary for Clarke Alonzo Pittenger, a reserve infielder with the Red Sox, Cubs, and Reds in the 1920s, described him as “a short-line-drive hitter and fancy fielder,” and stated that Pittenger “acquired his nickname from a comic-strip character in the 1920s” without specifying which one.

I took that as a challenge.

The hunt for Pinky’s comic namesake became a post of its own, and I’m making it a special Thursday postscript for Project 3.18’s awesome paid subscribers.

Q: 0 names

No surprise here. This one is on the parents. There are 61 player surnames beginning with Q and not one of them was named Quentin.

Winner: Wimpy Quinn

Here is an apologetic researcher trying to find something interesting to say about 1941 Cubs pitcher Wimpy Quinn:

R: 126 names

Hall-of-Famers: Robin Roberts, Red Ruffing

Runners-up: Ribs Raney, Rip Repulski, Roxey Roach

Winner: Randy Ready

Randy Max Ready was ready from an early age. At 13 years old he was living in Alaska where his father was employed in petroleum production, and young Ready was also working (extralegally?), performing odd jobs on those same oil fields. By the time he reached the major leagues in 1983, Ready was an unremarkable 5’ 11” and 180 pounds, measurements which gave him the advantage of surprise. “I don’t know what’s going on in that little man’s head,” teammate Tony Gwynn said of Ready, “but something is definitely clicking.”

Ready had his best year in 1987 with the San Diego Padres, while simultaneously dealing with the devastating aftereffects of a heart attack which left his wife Doreen permanently disabled. That season accounted for more than half of Ready’s total career value, but he spent 12 other seasons as a part-time infielder all around the major leagues. A gamer’s gamer who woke up scrappy and went to bed pesky, Ready became a minor-league coach and manager in the 21st century, tutoring a new generation of players in everything except launch angle.

S: 129 names

Runners-up: Sixto Sanchez, Skeeter Scalzi, Socks Seibold/Socks Seybold, Steamboat Struss

Winner: Sibby Sisti

A Brave for life, Sebastian “Sibby” Sisti joined Boston’s National League team in 1939 when he was 18 years old. During Sisti’s time with the team, it changed its name—from Bees back to Braves—and its home city, relocating to Milwaukee in 1953, a year before Sisti retired at age 33.

Despite a relatively niche career in Boston, the odds are that more people reading this have watched Sibby Sisti in uniform than any other player featured in this post. Sisti was living in Buffalo, New York in 1983, when a movie called The Natural began filming there. The retired player became a technical consultant, helping the production accurately capture his bygone era. In an acknowledgement of his contributions, Sisti got to don one last flannel uniform to play the sad-eyed Pittsburgh Pirates manager who calls in a fireballing lefty to face Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs in the film’s electric final sequence.

Telling the story of his movie career, Sisti promised he’d do things differently than his character if he was really calling the shots:

“This time, on the first pitch, Redford’s going right down on his ass.”

T: 77 names

Runners-up: Townsend Tapley, Taylor Teagarden, Tip Tobin, Twink Twining, Turkey Tyson

Winner: Touki Toussaint (TOO-key TOO-sahnt)

Dany Gilbert Kiti Toussaint, who pitched between 2018 and 2025, is of Haitian and Kenyan heritage. He got his called name from his family: It’s a portmanteau made from his parents’ surnames, “Toussaint” and “Kiti.” He never got a baseball nickname. If it ain’t broke, as they say.

U: 1 name

Winner: Ugueth Urbina

This was a tough one, because the name works but it turns out these awards need a “good character” clause. Urbina, a proficient back-end reliever for six teams, spent seven years in prison in his native Venezuela for participating in what was classified as an attempted murder of several people at his farm. Urbina did his time and after being released went back to pitching, playing with a Venezuelan Professional Baseball League team, the Leones del Caracas, as recently as 2023. At that time, Urbina was not closing the door on a future return to MLB. Can I close it?

Biography aside, Urbina’s alliterative name is a gem with one imperfection. His given names are “Ugueth Urtain” and “Urbina” is his paternal surname. But Urbina also has a maternal surname, “Villareal.” Let’s call that a disqualification and move on.

V: 7 names

Runner-up: Vito Valentinetti

Winner: Victor Vodnik

Colorado Rockies reliever Victor Vodnik wins his category more or less by default. Victor is his given name, and since no nicknames are indicated, I’m going to propose “Dr. Doom,” since he’s basically halfway to Victor von Doom already and it’s a great marketing tie-in with Avengers: Doomsday, releasing this winter. He’s even got a good villain stare.

W: 65 names

Hall-of-Famer: Willie Wells

Runners-up: Wild Bill West, Winfield Welch

Winner: Weldy Walker

On May 1, 1884, Moses Fleetwood Walker played catcher for the American Association Toledo Blue Stockings and became the first Black player to appear in a major league baseball game. On July 13, Moses’ brother, Weldy Wilberforce Walker, became the second, appearing in the Toledo outfield for the first of five times that season.

Progress had sprinted ahead with the Walkers, but prejudice caught up after 1884 and Black players were iced out of the American Association and the National League. It would be another 63 years before a third Black player played on an integrated major-league team. Guy by the name of Robinson.

Some minor leagues continued to allow integrated teams in the years after 1884, but the freeze was spreading. In 1887, 13 Black players including Weldy Walker were rostered in the Ohio State League. Before the 1888 season, the league reorganized, becoming the Tri-State League, and in the new configuration, an earlier by-law permitting teams to sign Black players was repealed.

On March 5, Walker wrote the Tri-State League’s president, a Mr. McDermitt, to protest and challenge the rules change. When he received no response from McDermitt, Walker took his letter to a national magazine, The Sporting Life, which printed the message in full. Here are the final three paragraphs:

X: 0 names

Winner: Leovigildo Xiqués

There is just one player on the entire roll of major-leaguers—again, a list of nearly 27,000 names—with a surname beginning with X. The distinction goes to Cuban outfielder Leovigildo Xiqués, who played three seasons with the Indianapolis Clowns in the mid-1940s. Apparently he was sometimes known by his maternal surname, Lugo, but there is no way I’m taking the only X in baseball history and shoving him in with the L’s.

Y: 3 names

Runners-up: Yasuhiko Yabuta, Yoshinobu Yamamoto

Winner: Yam Yaryan

Hailed (faintly) as “one of the greatest minor-league catchers of all time” and “the Babe Ruth of the Western League,” Everett Yaryan was signed by the Chicago White Sox, a team which did not need any catchers. Ray Schalk was in the middle of his Hall-of-Fame career and this was in the 1920s, when injuries didn’t exist and no one took days off, so Yaryan mostly caught batting practice. At least he got a nickname out of it—assigned by White Sox second baseman Eddie Collins. Collins said he wasn’t willing to call the catcher by his given name and couldn’t remember his last name. So he came up with something pleasingly memorable. Collins was lazy, but he had good taste in alliteration.

Z: 1 name

Winner: Zip Zabel

Three cheers for George Washington Zabel, dubbed “Zip” by someone who would have enjoyed this post, though his SABR biographer sniffs at the nickname and refuses to use it. Nevertheless, Zabel is both the only entrant and a deserving winner in this category.

Zabel pitched for the Chicago Cubs between 1913 and 1915. His greatest day in baseball came late in his major-league career, on June 17, 1915, when the Cubs’ starter, Bert Humphries, took a line drive off his hand and had to leave the game in the first inning. Zabel was called to replace him, and replace he did—for18 innings.

The Cubs and the Brooklyn Robins were tied, 2-2, when the game went into extras. Each team tacked on another run in the 15th, and the game did not end until the 19th inning, when the Cubs scored a two-out, walk-off run. Zabel got the win and a record for innings pitched in relief that is nigh unbreakable. Meanwhile, Zabel’s Brooklyn counterpart, Jeff Pfeffer2, pitched all 19 innings for the Robins and got only a loss for his trouble.

Arm issues cropped up after that (shocking, isn’t it?) and Zabel was sold to a minor-league team in 1916, ending his big-league career. That hardly bothered the scholarly Zabel, who used baseball as a means to pay for college. He became a renowned metallurgist, a materials scientist with a baseball record safer than Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

This post is dedicated to the legion of scholars who contribute to the Society of Baseball Researchers’ Baseball Biography Project, an invaluable resource for anyone exploring the history of the national pastime. While I do as much original research as possible for Project 3.18, the nature of this piece meant leaning on the dozens of diligent, committed writers who have generated thousands of essay-length biographies on players whose careers were in some cases shorter than the time it took to write them up. It’s heroic work, and I thank them.

Next week Project 3.18 will look at some of baseball’s strangest weather. The game has always lived and died by meteorological conditions, but in the second half of the 20th century, roofed ballparks promised to keep the weather out of the schedule. It should have worked, but one player seemed to have rain clouds following him wherever he went.

Even when he went indoors.

On July 27: “Rained In”

In 1977, the Chicago Cubs and New York Mets were caught up in a catastrophic power outage that sent Fun City back to the Stone Age.

Highlights:

- A blowout at Indian Point plunges Shea Stadium (and New York) into darkness

- Camaraderie lights up the town and the ballpark

- Jane Jarvis’ musical comedy soothes the sweating masses

- Ten minutes of phantom ball in the headlights

- The Cubs’ weirdest night at the Waldorf

- Scenes from New York’s darkest night

- Sorry, America, no sports news today

One More Thing:

On the show, I told Ted that former New York mayor Abraham Beame would fit right in on The Simpsons, and I stand by it:

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Earlier this week Ted and I welcomed a special guest on Clear the Field. joined us to celebrate a few of history’s great “baseball names.” We brought four or five excellent real names of current or former players…and everyone threw in a fake name to keep things interesting.

The names gave way to some amazing biographical details. For example, 1930s playboy pitcher Boots Poffenberger had a very specific fear of telephones. Would not use them or even acknowledge them, according to multiple sources. Marvelous. I hope you’ll check out the episode (and Gordon’s outstanding work on YouTube, where he is blowing up).

(We’re working on adding podcast episodes on YouTube for people who like to watch that way. I made this title card and I’m pretty proud of it!)

I decided that the best way to prepare for the show was to look at ALL the names. That meant consulting a dataset from baseball-reference.com containing a shade under 27,000 current and former players. I looked at given names, full names, and “called names,” the surname with which the player was most associated. For example, George Herman Ruth’s “called name” was “Babe,” so that’s the name you find at the top of his BR player page. He had other nicknames, of course, which are listed separately in their own section, but indexing the Alternate Nickname database can be a project for some other sicko.

Names are a tiny window into people, especially in the aggregate. You can see a little bit of the culture that might have produced a nickname, learn what names were popular and not, take a quick tour through names originating all over the world, in Ireland, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Japan. Long before the fraternity of players started bestowing ironic nicknames on their teammates, some of their parents were already riffing on their newborns’ birth certificates, and that tells you something about them.

Going through the list, I noticed a lot of alliterative names, and that made me happy. When neighboring words use the same sounds, usually at the beginning, that’s alliteration. There are 17 alliterative players enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but that’s just the head of a group of 1,600 professional players from Andy Abad to Willie Wynn.

So let’s have some fun today and honor the best alliterative name for each letter of the alphabet…and hopefully uncover what household appliances made them nervous.

A: 54 names

Runners-up: Al Alburquerque, Army Armstrong

Winner: Art Allison

With no standouts, we’re giving the win to baseball pioneer Arthur Algernon Allison, whose parents wanted to be sure their son’s name would appear at the top of every alphabetical list he might ever be included on. 177 years later, their plan is still working.

Speaking of firsts, Art Allison participated in what is considered the first-ever major league baseball game, on May 4, 1871, between the Cleveland Forest Cities and the Ft. Wayne Kekiongas1 of the National Association. Allison played center field for Cleveland and recorded the first strikeout and stolen base in major league history during that game.

B: 275 names

The largest number of contestants in any category.

Hall-of-Famer: Bert Blyleven

Runners-up: Boom-Boom Beck, Bob Blewett, and Buddy Burbage

Winner: Boardwalk Brown

Pitcher Boardwalk Brown beats out a crowded field because I wrote five interesting things about him, including the origin of his nickname, for an earlier piece. I’ll just leave a link to that and on we go.

C: 155 names

Hall-of-Famers: Charles Comiskey2, Candy Cummings

Runners-up: Callix Crabbe, Cupid Childs, Creepy Crespi

Winner: Choo-Choo Coleman

Mets catcher Choo-Choo Coleman was cagey about his nickname for a while, but eventually gave an anticlimactic explanation, saying he got it as a kid, “because I was fast.” Coleman appeared in a few games for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1961 before being selected by the New York Mets in the expansion draft that stocked the team, and he proved to be a great fit for the 1962 Amazin’s. His manager, Casey Stengel, remarked that he’d never seen a catcher as fast at retrieving passed balls as Clarence Coleman. Along with “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry, Coleman became an early standard-bearer for a team of beloved misfits, adored in New York for the simple and inarguable fact that the Mets were better than nothing.

D: 101 names

Hall-of-Famers: Dizzy Dean, Don Drysdale

Runners-up: Dell Darling, Daisy Davis, Dick Drago

Winner:

Dory Dean

Long before Dizzy and Daffy3, there was Dory. After the famous first professional team, the Red Stockings, left Cincinnati in 1870, six years passed before a new team, the Reds, stepped in to fill the breach. Dory Dean, an accomplished amateur pitcher in the area, became that club’s second pitcher, and then the club’s only pitcher when the first guy was released.

His stuff was hit hard in professional play, so Dean came up with a new delivery, “facing second base with the ball in hand, and then turning quickly, letting it come in the general direction of the stand, without any idea of where it really was going to land.” This novel approach didn’t do much to change his fortunes: He went 4-26 on a team that went 9-56, a record that led a reporter to remind the Reds’ bumbling owner that people paying to see major-league games expected to see actual major leaguers play. For all his innovative pluck, Dory Dean was not one of these.

E: 15 names

Plenty of potential wasted here, and it’s a shame.

Winner: Eddie Eayrs

I assume this surname is pronounced “Ay-ers,” but just in case it’s pronounced like “Ears,” Eddie gets the win.

F: 29 names

Hall-of-Famer: Frankie Frisch

Runners-up: Frank Fleet4, Frank Funk

Winner: Ferris Fain

Ferris Fain was one of the best hitters of the late 1940s and 1950s. He overcame poverty and abuse to find success, but his struggles left him quick to anger and ready to fight. Philadelphia reporters made Fain an easy winner in this category, dubbing him “Furious Ferris,” “Fearless Ferris,” and the Firebrand.” One less alliterative writer observed that Fain took any defeat as a personal insult, calling him “the Angry Champion.”

Fain retired to a hilly farm near California’s Sierra Nevadas, but his exploits made news again in 1985, when he was arrested for growing marijuana. He was still at it three years later when authorities discovered an industrial-scale growing operation in his barn, making this a full-on Breaking Bad-type situation. Fain, age 67, did 18 months for his crimes, but Fiery Ferris did not do remorse:

I grew them because, damn it, I was good at growing things, just like I was good at hitting a baseball.

G: 78 names

Hall-of-Famer: Goose Goslin. I know some might say Goose Gossage should also be here, but I’m a rule-follower and on Baseball Reference that player is listed as “Rich Gossage,” so he’s out.

Runners-up: Gus Getz, Gary Glover, Gary Gray (middle name George), Gene Green

Winner: Goose Goslin

When Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, came to see Leon Goslin play in a minor-league game in 1921, the left fielder was clearly a work in progress. One fly ball reportedly hit Goslin on the head that day, and another just missed. In that same game, however, he hit three home runs, and that was good enough for Griffith to make him a Senator.

Goslin’s defensive growing pains continued in the major leagues, where amused teammates watched him track fly balls waving his arms like he was trying to take off. A clever Washington writer played that off his last name, dubbing him “Goose,” a name which stuck even as the hits kept coming. That once-pejorative nickname is now on his plaque in the Hall of Fame, listed alongside many offensive accomplishments.

No defensive accomplishments are mentioned.

H: 72 names

Hall-of-Famers: Harry Heilmann, Harry Hooper

Runners-up: Harvey Haddix, Heath Hembree

Winner: Hinkey Haines (and Hunky Hines)

Surely every New Yorker knows all about Henry “Hinkey” Haines, the only athlete to ever win a World Series ring (with the 1923 New York Yankees) and a National Football League championship (with the 1927 New York Football Giants—over the New York Football Yankees).

Haines, a superb athlete, played a reserve role on the first Yankees team to ever win a championship, in their first season at Yankee Stadium. But on a team loaded with bats, his never broke through. In football, however, he shined, earning accolades for his for cunning on the field and the golden hands that made him a talented wide receiver who helped the Giants to their best-record victory in 1927, beating out the football Yankees, led by Red Grange.

And there’s more—so much more. Haines once participated in a stunt catch, receiving a pass thrown 324 feet down from the top of a newly built 24-story New York skyscraper. Oh, and there’s the story about the time Haines snuck his pal Babe Ruth into a Giants practice to participate as a tackle, his identity known only to Haines and the coach. Ruth retired from football after two plays. The name is the least interesting part, just a nonsense name someone dropped on him in college that happened to stick.

And that brings us to Henry “Hunkey” Hines, who appeared in three games for the Brooklyn Grooms in 1895. Hines earned his nickname in the minor leagues in 1890, where the local paper described as:

…the only man in the team thus far who boasts a mustache. This hirsute adjunct is dark and heavy, as is his hair—which he wears a la pompadour. His face is rather long, and his eyes dark blue and deep-set.

Two outstanding names, but since Hunky Hines won no championships in any sport and never snuck Babe Ruth into anything, it’s Hinkey Haines by a whisker.

I: 0 names

Baseball has had 83 players whose surname began with the letter I, suggesting some real opportunities were left on the table here. Nobody from that group was ever nicknamed “Ivy” or “Iggy” or “Ike.” What about “Ice Box?” Anybody?

Winner: Bert Inks

Albert Inks pitched in the 1890s. “Inky” Inks was right there for the taking but nobody made a move!

J: 115 names

Hall-of-Famer: Judy Johnson

Runners-up: Jelly Jackson, Janson Junk, Joe Just

Winner: Judy Johnson

In the years after World War I, William Julius Johnson, who would become the best third baseman in the history of the Negro Leagues and an essential figure in both preserving the history of Black Baseball and recognizing the greatness of the men who played it, came to Philadelphia to join the Hilldale club. His new teammates decided he bore a resemblance to an in-and-out teammate of theirs named Judy Gans.

When Johnson arrived, Gans was gone, and the other Hilldale players decided to maintain their status quo: “They said I looked so much like him they called me Judy, too.”

Gans was a solid player, but the new Judy would prove to be something else entirely.

K: 35 names

Hall-of-Famer: King Kelly

Runners-up: Katsy Keifer

Winner: Kenny Kelly

The obvious winner here is Mike “King” Kelly, the “$10,000 Beauty,” baseball’s first crossover star, a central figure in the game’s early professional history and the only major-league player with a firm grip on that royal title. But I’m giving the win to Kenny Kelly, an early 2000s outfield prospect who appeared in a handful of major-league games, so I can share the picture used to represent him on his otherwise carefully detailed Wikipedia page. This is easily the worst identifier image I have ever seen:

Kenny Kelly was a two-way baseball/football talent in college. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1997 for $450,000 and later signed a four-year, $2.7 million dollar contract that secured his full commitment to baseball. That’s over $3.1 million for -0.1 WAR and 14 major-league at-bats.

Back in 1886, Mike Kelly was sold from Chicago to Boston for $10,000, a historic sum at the time, even for a player who accumulated 46 WAR in his career. $10,000 in 1886 is significantly less money than $450,000 in 1997. Looking at it that way, I think we can all appreciate who the real king is.

Know a great alliterative name that didn’t make our list? Represent your guy in the comments (A-L only, please; M-Z stans, hold your fire for one more week).

Leave a comment

L: 42 names

Runners-up: Lerrin LaGrow, Lyn Lary, Lou Limmer, Lep Long

Winner: Leonidas Lee

Leonidas Phyrrus Lee pitched in four games for the St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1877. Named after two famed generals of Greek antiquity, he was a slam-dunk winner here…until we read somewhere that his original last name was “Funkhouser.”

Disqualified!

…which is not to say “Leonidas Funkhouser” isn’t a great name in non-alliterative competition. I bet he and Boots Poffenberger would have been friends.

Here’s the star- and scrub-studded second half, starting with M. And when the winner is NOT Mickey Mantle or Minnie Minoso, you know it’s a loaded category.

In a very special episode, joined us to talk about a shared love: the baseball name. We never did define the term, but the three of us certainly knew some good ones, famous and obscure. To keep things interesting, we each threw in a fake name and player, to see if the other guys could spot it. Our record at uncovering fraud was mixed; hopefully yours will be better. Either way, we brought some actual immortal monikers back for your consideration.

We cover about 20 of the 26,000-some professional baseball names on this episode, so this may be Volume 1 of a series. We had a blast. If you did, too, leave a comment and include your favorite baseball name.

Leave a comment

Come back any time, Gordon!

P.S. Be sure to check out Gordon’s fantastic work on his YouTube channel. There’s something in The Athlete Archives for everyone.

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In honor of the 209th birthday of the United States of America, the 44,997 fans who came to Atlanta Fulton County Stadium on July 4, 1985 were promised fireworks. But first there would be baseball, the Braves against the New York Mets. Both the game and the fireworks depended on the weather, a double-or-nothing summer spectacular, and it was raining in Atlanta at 7:40 p.m., when the game was supposed to start.

An hour passed before the grounds crew could remove the infield tarp. At 9:04 p.m., when most of the city’s other fireworks shows were being hurriedly set off in the window of good weather, the game was just getting underway.

Rick Mahler, 11-7, started for the Braves. Dwight Gooden started for New York. Gooden, 20 years old, was 11-3 on the season, with a 1.75 earned run average and more strikeouts than Nolan Ryan. His participation made the Mets the favorite going into the game, but Gooden never really got going. He walked three in the second inning, putting a lot of pitches on his precious arm. He recorded a strikeout and gave up a single in the third, and then the rain returned.

The game was delayed for 40 minutes. Davey Johnson, the Mets’ manager, watched the skies, frowned, and shook his head. Gooden had sat for too long. When the weather cleared, a reliever, Roger McDowell, replaced him.

The Braves’ manager, Eddie Haas, allowed his starter one tentative batter after the rain delay. Mahler gave up a single and Haas came for the baseball. It was looking like a long night for the bullpens.

New York first baseman Keith Hernandez doubled in the first and tripled in the fourth, contributing to a four-run inning that put the Mets ahead, 5-3. With no designated hitter to tidy things up, the double-bullpen game fractured into a jigsaw puzzle of pitching changes, position shifts, and double-switches.

Hernandez homered in the eighth and the Mets were winning, 7-4. Around this time, the Mets’ television broadcast crew, Ralph Kiner and Tim McCarver, began planning their departure, summoning a cab to wait for the end of the game. They hoped the soon-to-be-lit fireworks would keep fans in their seats and let them jump in their cab and beat the traffic.

Davey Johnson began calling in what were, in theory, his best bullpen arms, starting with Jesse Orosco. Orosco was struggling after several excellent years, and he wasn’t alone. The former Mets’ stopper now glumly described himself and fellow relievers Doug Sisk and Tom Gorman as the Mets’ “continuers.” He got the continuing going against the bottom of the Braves’ order, loading the bases and walking in a run before Johnson pulled him. Sisk entered the game and center fielder Dale Murphy hit a three-run double, giving Atlanta an 8-7 lead.

Bruce Sutter, the Braves’ closer, did some continuing of his own in the top of the ninth inning, giving up three straight singles and a run that tied the game. The Braves did not score in the bottom of the ninth. July 4 was over, but the game was not.

When night baseball first arrived in the major leagues in the mid-1930s, it came with some sensible rules. One of them held that no major-league inning could begin after 12:50 a.m. Any game dragging that late into the night would be suspended and completed at a later date.

For some reason, Branch Rickey hated this rule.

In 1949, Rickey, then the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was up to his usual disruptive tricks. He had already reshaped the minor leagues with the “farm system” and dashed baseball’s unofficial color barrier, and this time Rickey had his sights set on the official rules, all of them. He was embarrassed by the rulebook at the time, seeing it as a hodgepodge of regulations, some written in language so archaic that it might as well be dead. A great housecleaning was necessary, and Rickey got himself put in charge of a committee that would recodify the old-time game for the modern day.

In the course of their work, Rickey’s committee took the liberty of doing some keep-and-throw, and one of the things they discarded was the sport-wide prohibition on games continuing long past midnight. The individual leagues could make those rules for themselves. The American League, facing pressure from several cities with their own curfews, quickly reinserted the rule, but the National League, where Rickey held sway until 1955, never did, presumably having forgotten the whole thing.

The issue was not revisited in the NL until the early 1980s. The resulting rule, 4.1(d), stated:

A legal game stopped because of bad weather after 12:45 a.m. shall be called immediately and become a suspended game.

In other words, only an act of God could halt a late game in the National League.

Doug Sisk continued pitching for the Mets, faring much better with the bases empty and delivering a scoreless 10th, 11th, and 12th for New York. He was matched by the Braves’ Terry Forster. Forster had been a capable reliever for A long time, but late in his career he was struggling with his weight. Forster’s size had recently attracted the attention of David Letterman, the svelte host of NBC’s Late Night show, who made waves by describing Forster as “a fat tub of goo.1” He didn’t seem very gooey as he threw three scoreless innings for Atlanta, including the 12th, when Keith Hernandez singled and became the fourth Mets player ever to hit for the cycle.

Forster ran into trouble in the 13th, giving up a two-run home run to Howard Johnson, a late-inning replacement off New York’s rapidly emptying bench. Johnson’s blast made it 10-8.

Lefthanded Tom Gorman was the only reliever left in the Mets’ dugout, and in the bottom of the inning, Davey Johnson called on Gorman to reel in the save that eluded Orosco back on July 4. Gorman gave up a single and struck out Gerald Perry and Dale Murphy. He had an 0-2 count on the Braves’ right fielder, Terry Harper, and went with a forkball. Harper sent it aloft. The towering fly ball appeared foul until it dinged off the left-field foul pole, a home run that tied the game again. Like Orosco, Gorman had a blown save, but with no other relievers left, he had to keep pitching.

Tim McCarver and Ralph Kiner, both former players, were deep into their bag of yarn. Kiner in particular had slipped into a kind of storytelling fugue state, tossing off trivia and anecdotes with an increasingly casual grip on dates and facts, filling the dead time while the Mets failed to win and refused to lose. McCarver kept reminding insomniacs tuning in at home that they were not watching a late-night replay of the earlier game: “This is really happening. It is now 2 a.m. New York and Atlanta time.”

Hearing this, Kiner seemed to briefly come back to reality: “Seriously, though, this is ridiculous.”

It was ridiculous. The beer vendors were long gone, but every coffee pot in the stadium was percolating. One fan in the upper deck swore they heard a vendor call, “Waffles, grits, cold milk!” Perhaps he’d dreamt it; many people were plainly asleep in their seats.

Tens of thousands of sensible guests had already left, but the rest lingered, savoring the novelty and burnishing their “die-hard” credentials. Many small children remained at their posts. Their parents had promised fireworks, and a promise was a promise.

One nine-year-old, whose usual bed time was 9 o’clock, told a reporter he was getting through the night on a combination of hot dogs and naps. “I’ve had fun,” he said, “even though we’ve been here since the beginning.”

The 14th, 15th, and 16th innings came and went. In the Mets’ dugout, players reached back to high school tactics, turning their jackets inside-out and donning “rally caps,” the headwear of the truly desperate. “We were literally trying anything,” Keith Hernandez said.

If he had to suffer, Hernandez wanted to be sure somebody knew about it. “[In the 17th inning] I figured I just had to call somebody. I called my brother Gary and told him I just wanted him to know I was still out here playing.”

A few players appeared to be early birds. Howard Johnson entered the game in the ninth inning and went 3-for-5 with an intentional walk. Ray Knight, the Mets’ third baseman, had had a miserable July 4, going 0-for-7, including three outs with the bases loaded. But once the calendar turned to July 5, Knight seemed to wake up, going 3-for-4. “That was my problem last year, I couldn’t hit before 2 a.m.”

Tom Gorman was still pitching in the 17th inning. Forster (and his replacement) were gone, removed for pinch hitters who hadn’t hit. Now Haas brought in Atlanta’s last available reliever, Rick Camp.

Camp was greeted by Gary Carter, the Mets’ catcher, who caught the entire game for New York. “It took a toll on me,” Carter said, “but I wanted to be in there.” The Mets wanted him in there, too: He was as in the zone as Ralph Kiner, going 5-9 with a walk that night. One of those hits was a single off of Camp. Next came right fielder Darryl Strawberry, who had also played the entire game. Camp got Strawberry with a called strike three. Strawberry rounded on the home plate umpire, Terry Tata, pointing out, perhaps correctly, that Camp’s pitch was nowhere near the strike zone.

Umpires get tired, too. According to Strawberry, Tata replied, “At 3 o’clock [in the morning], that’s a good pitch.” Strawberry decided, perhaps correctly, that that was an opinion worth challenging, and he got ejected When Davey Johnson heard what had been said, he got himself thrown out, too.

Camp finished his inning and Tom Gorman cruised through the bottom of the 17th. The crowd cheered when the stadium announcer reported the game had officially become the longest in major-league history. A plaintive banner in the upper deck seats unfurled:

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

After four becalmed innings, the game began moving in the 18th. Howard Johnson singled and advanced on an error when Camp made a bad throw fielding a bunt attempt. Center fielder Lenny Dykstra hit a sacrifice fly, breaking the deadlock and giving Tom Gorman his second save opportunity of the night.

Gorman was in his sixth inning of work, but he still looked strong, getting through Gerald Perry and Terry Harper, who had earlier ruined his Fourth of July. With two away, the Braves were down their last batter, Rick Camp.

As a National League pitcher who got his share of garbage innings, Camp already had a handful of plate appearances that season. None ended in hits, but he walked once with the bases loaded, so there was some hope.

Still, disrespect was rampant as Camp came to the plate with the game on the line. Gary Carter and the entire Mets infield rose as one and began performatively waving the outfielders closer in.

Camp took a mighty cut at Gorman’s first offering and fouled it off. Atlanta Journal writer Gerry Fraley described the pitcher’s swing as “unpolished.”

“Camp’s lifetime average,” McCarver noted, “is 062. No career home runs. Ten career base hits.”

One booth over, the Braves’ television broadcast team that night, Ernie Johnson and John Sterling, were having the same conversation, albeit with a more positive spin.

“At least he took a good cut,” Sterling said. The tired Sterling succumbed to a daydream. “Ernie, if he hits a home run to tie this game…”

Johnson laughed at the very idea of it. Sterling went on:

If he hits a home run, this game will be certified as absolutely the nuttiest in the history of baseball.

Camp watched strike two, which had caught a piece of umpire Terry Tata’s “after-hours” zone. Now Sterling sounded like he was starting to pack up his things. “It’ll be an 0-2 pitch.”

Camp took another swing from his heels—and hit Tom Gorman’s forkball as hard as he’d ever hit a ball in his life. “Deep left!” Sterling cried. Left fielder Danny Heep threw up his hands, tossing away his glove. In center field, Lenny Dykstra sunk to his knees. Sterling managed to sound both incredulous and exhilarated: “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! Rick Camp. Rick Camp!”

Camp was all business as he rounded the bases. Ernie Johnson laughed. “If you only knew,” he told the audience, “on the Braves, we kid Rick Camp about his hitting more than anything.”

It was considerably quieter in the Mets’ booth after Kiner called the home run. Finally McCarver broke the silence:

Well, these fans thought they were going to see some fireworks tonight. Rick Camp’s first major-league home run has re-tied this ballgame.

“I mean, that is the most improbable act,” Sterling said. “I mean if you told me that John Sterling’s going to run for president and win, that wouldn’t be any more improbable. That’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened in baseball. I’m telling you the odds on that have to be a million to one. Ten million to one.”

“Rick Camp had struck a blow at the order of the universe,” Gerry Fraley wrote in the Journal. “He took his free-wheeling swing and proved that all things were possible.”

Camp returned to the mound for the top of the 19th inning. He faced Gary Carter, who singled again. After a sacrifice and an intentional walk, Knight, the Mets’ third baseman, doubled in a run that gave the Mets another lead. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited about one base hit in my whole career,” Knight said.

The dominoes began falling. Another walk, a single, an error. Three more runs. Second baseman Wally Backman drove in a fifth run with the team’s 28th hit, a team record.

By then it was past 3:45 in the morning. Surely it was over, but the fans—and the players—had seen too much to make assumptions. The dugout benches were unusually crowded; normally a steady stream of players would have left for the clubhouses, but on this night, “No one wanted to miss all the weird things happening,” Howard Johnson said. The fans kept their seats, too. Whatever happened, they knew they’d want to be able to say they’d stayed until the end when they told the story of this game any number of times over the rest of their lives.

Tom Gorman was finally out of the game, subbed for a pinch-hitter, Rusty Staub (another veteran looking a little portly to David Letterman’s eyes). But since the Mets had taken the lead before Gorman was removed, he was in line for a win to go along with his two blown saves.

Requiring one more pitcher, the Mets had no choice but to dip into their starters, and Ron Darling made his first relief appearance since his days pitching at Yale. Darling got a groundout to open the inning but another routine ground ball rolled between Keith Hernandez’s legs. He made no apologies. “I was so exhausted, I could hardly move.”

The next batter flied out, but Darling walked Dale Murphy and Gerald Perry to load the bases. Terry Harper hit a two-run single, making it 16-13. No crowd had ever been so happy to see their relief pitcher step into the batter’s box with two outs. “We want Camp! We want Camp!”

“I was more nervous with Camp up than I would have been if it was Willie Stargell,” Ray Knight said.

Ron Darling kept his cool. “I couldn’t let him hit another one,” he said. “It was no time to pick away at the corners. I threw the ball as hard as I could right down the middle.” Rick Camp swung away, but Darling had beaten him, and the Braves.

It was 3:55 a.m.

The Braves/Mets game on July 4/5, 1985 yielded a bumper crop of outlandish facts and figures.

Six hours and 10 minutes, the longest single game in history, with the latest ending time. Adding in the rain delay, it took eight hours and 15 minutes to determine a winner.

Ten players were on the field for the entire game, including Dale Murphy, Gerald Perry, Wally Backman, and Lenny Dykstra. The latter two had 11 at-bats.

Keith Hernandez called Tom Gorman the night’s “hard-luck winner.” With two blown saves, six innings pitched, and a win, it was a difficult performance to process. “I think I saw it all tonight,” Gorman said. “I should have saved the game. I should have won it. I should have lost it. It’s the weirdest game I’ve ever seen.”

In the clubhouse, a reporter reminded Rick Mahler that he had started the game and Mahler seemed almost surprised. “Did I?”

The Fifth of July fireworks began above Atlanta Fulton County Stadium at 4:01 in the morning. According to the Braves’ PR director, Wayne Minshew, there was no question about whether it was too late to use them. “As long as there were people at the game, we were obligated to fire them off, I thought.”

Less than an hour before dawn’s early light began creeping up from the east, 1500 pounds of fireworks were sent skyward, waking up the whole neighborhood.

The team received “about thirty complaints,” according to Minshew, and the area police precinct passed on several more. The Braves took those lumps with no regrets. They had promised their fans fireworks—and a promise was a promise.