By Edwin Cooney
As Jack and Jackie Frost bequeath
America another baseball season (ah, you thought all Mr. and Mrs. Frost ever
parented were blizzards!), more than 750 professional baseball players are
ready to perform for you and me. These
days, they come from all over the world. Day in and day out between April and
October they provide fans with surprise and wonderment.
Herman A. (Germany) Schaefer, a native
of Chicago, was a real showman. He would
play briefly in vaudeville before his death in May 1919 at the tender age of
42. In his 15 year career, Schaefer
would play second base for the Cubs, Tigers, Senators, Yankees and the
Indians.
Schaefer was playing for the Detroit
Tigers against the Cleveland Naps on Tuesday, July 3rd, 1906. It was the ninth inning and Detroit was
behind by a run. Davy Jones was on third
and Schaefer was on first. Hoping to
draw a throw to second from Nap’s catcher Jay Clarke which would allow Jones to
score from third base, Schaefer took off from first. However, Clarke was smart enough not to
throw. Standing on second, Schaefer
shouted to Jones, “Shall we try it?”
Suddenly, to everyone’s shock, Germany Schaefer took off from second
hook sliding into first base. Time was
called by Cleveland but umpires could find nothing in the rulebook that
prevented a runner from retreating from second to first base. Then Schaefer yelled to Clarke, “I’m going on
the next pitch” and so he did. Challenged as he was by Schaefer’s audacity,
Clarke did throw to second this time which allowed Jones to score as Germany
Schaefer was ruled safe at second.
Schaefer is known to have used that trick as late as 1911, but my
sources of information are contradictory about the outcome. You won’t see that play this season since it
is no longer legal to steal first base. However, you might see something like
the following play in 2015.
It happened at the “friendly confines”
of Wrigley Field on Tuesday, June 30th, 1959. (Note: under the rules of
baseball, if a pitched ball strikes the hitter’s bat, even if he doesn’t swing
at the pitch, it’s ruled a strike up to two strikes and a foul ball after that
as long as it isn’t called fair after leaving the bat.) It was the fourth inning and the great Stan
(The Man) Musial was hitting. The count
was three balls and one strike. Cubs’
pitcher Bob Anderson delivered a pitch that umpire Vic Delmore called ball four
on Musial. Musial headed for first as
the ball got away from Cubs’ catcher Sammy Taylor. While Anderson and Taylor argued with Delmore
saying that the ball had hit his bat and was therefore strike two, Musial
rounded first and headed for second.
Meanwhile, three things happened.
The Cubs’ bat boy retrieved the original ball and tossed it to Cubs’
field announcer Pat Pieper. Seeing that
Musial was headed toward second, Cubs’ third baseman Alvin Dark grabbed the
original ball from Pieper and threw it to Cubs’ shortstop Ernie Banks. Banks
tagged Musial with the original ball as he slid into second. Meanwhile, umpire Delmore had given Cubs’
pitcher Bob Anderson another ball.
Anderson saw Musial heading for second base. He threw the ball toward second, but it went
into center field. As you can imagine, a
ten-minute argument occurred. Solly
Hemus, the Cardinals’ manager, made the argument that not only was it ball
four, but that interference should have been called on the Cubs’ bat boy. Cubs’ manager Bob Sheffing argued that the
ball had hit Musial’s bat and that the count was now three balls and two
strikes. Ultimately, umpire Al Barlick
ruled that Musial was safe at first base and Delmore ruled that Musial was out
at second, because Musial was ultimately tagged out by the original ball. The Cardinals won the game 4 to 2 thus
avoiding a protest to the National League office regarding the umpires’ ruling.
Baseball has been affected by the
changing times in countless ways although it is basically the same game. Most
fans are content with the game’s alterations: lighter bats, larger gloves,
superior player conditioning, nutritioning and medical care, night games and
air travel and celebrity that makes players almost as rich as their corporate
bosses. Still, it is possible to see
something at any single game that you’ve never seen before.
Take the case of John (Bud) Clancy, a
first baseman for the Chicago White Sox.
On Sunday, April 27th, 1930 in St. Louis playing the Browns, Clancy
didn’t need his glove. No putouts or
assists occurred at first base throughout the nine innings played that day Clancy, a left-handed batter and thrower,
played nine years in the majors for the White Sox, Dodgers, and Phillies. You might say Clancy’s career (he batted .281
had 26 triples and 12 home runs) was respectable if not solid or spectacular!
One of the major complaints about
baseball by those who don’t regard themselves as baseball fans is both the pace
and length of games these days.
On Tuesday, September 30th, 1919, the
New York Giants who had defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers in 57 minutes by a score
of 1 to nothing the year before, took just 51 minutes to defeat the
Philadelphia Phillies, 6 to 1. It’s my
guess that the radio and television commercials for a full nine-inning game today
would take more than an hour.
Perhaps more than any other sport,
baseball reflects all of the assets and liabilities of human nature for over
200 days of every year. Even more, day
in and day out, baseball offers everyone the mystery of the unknown.
One of the most competitive pitchers in
either league between 1976 and 1988 was Joaquin Andujar. Referred to by some as “one mean Dominican,”
Andujar was actually thrown out of the last game of the 1985 Kansas City
Royals/St. Louis Cardinals World Series.
He was once asked by a reporter how a batter could know for sure whether
a pitcher was deliberately throwing at him.
Andujar’s reply applied as much to the
more pleasant question of what a fan might expect to see any day while
attending a ball game as it did to a batter’s uncertainty of a pitcher’s
intentions.
“Ya never know,” Andujar replied. He’s exactly right on both counts: you never
do!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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