Author: howard

• Joe Posnanski offers a great look on players who may have put together solid cases for Cooperstown but were Not Famous Enough. I like the idea in general of alternate Hall of Fames, be it the Baseball Reliquary, Hall of Merit or a Hall of limited Fame that I proposed last year.
• Lots of people, fans or not, probably know the story of the 1919 World Series, how eight members of the Chicago White Sox lost on purpose in exchange for gambling money. Less known may be the fact that it possibly wasn’t the only Series thrown, and that gambling influence was rife in baseball between 1900 and 1920. Now, grand jury testimony has been found from 1920, given by one of Black Sox, pitcher Eddie Cicottte that suggests they got the idea from the losing team in the 1918 World Series, Chicago Cubs.
• Rory Paap, who has contributed articles here and is a man about the baseball blogosphere has an April 17 piece for the Hardball Times about Tim Lincecum’s evolving repertoire, particularly a new slider grip Matt Cain taught him.
• Behind the Beard: A Hair Raising Look at Baseball’s Changing Face. Title pretty much says it all, with the post featuring pictures dating back to the 1880s and a YouTube video of Roy Campanella in a 1950 shaving commercial. On a side note, this blog is generally fantastic, with lots of well-written content. I have no idea how this guy does it.
• Fangraphs post on the lack of women employed by Major League Baseball. The author notes that a post done on this subject a month ago was, “I think, the most-commented on post in the history of Fangraphs,” with the majority of the comments being shallow and sexist. This new post has already gotten, as of this writing, 285 comments in a day.

What he did: I’ve picked up some freelance writing work in recent weeks, and on Tuesday, I was in San Francisco at one of the firms I write for, and we got to talking about the Hall of Fame. I mentioned I’d written a column on Barry Bonds’ future candidacy, which led to us talking about the chances his teammate Jeff Kent will be enshrined. I say yes, and one of my clients agreed, calling Kent the best power-hitting second baseman in baseball history. Close, but not quite. I rank Kent second to arguably the best right-handed batter ever, Rogers Hornsby.

A .358 lifetime hitter, second only to Ty Cobb, Hornsby hit 301 home runs despite playing his first few seasons in the Deadball Era and badly declining after age 35. Kent has more home runs at 377, since he played regularly until retiring at 40, though Hornsby trounces him in slugging percentage at .577 to .500, and he led the league in it nine times while Kent never did it. It makes me wonder what Hornsby might have accomplished playing in Kent’s place in San Francisco in recent years. I’m guessing a lot.

Era he might have thrived in: Kent played in San Francisco from 1997 until 2002, so we’ll plug Hornsby in there. In his time, Hornsby was the only man to hit .400 and 40 home runs in the same season, when he won the Triple Crown in 1922. As a modern Giant, Hornsby might do greater still and forge a longer career.

Why: If ever a player could have used an environment like San Francisco, it’s Hornsby, a temperamental superstar who wore out his welcome with five teams. It’s saying something when a guy is shown the door in successive years after hitting .361 for one club and .387 for his next. Milton Bradley has nothing on Hornsby. Rajah was baseball’s original pariah.

Enter San Francisco, where a star as narcissistic and abrasive as Barry Bonds played 15 years. Bonds and Kent clashed and even brawled once in the dugout, though their feuding wasn’t so great to keep Kent from making three All Star teams and winning the 2000 NL MVP award. If Kent makes the Hall of Fame, it will be due to the shift in his career after the Giants traded for him in 1996. In San Francisco, Kent went from being a talented young player to a star. The thought here is Hornsby could co-exist, at least for a time with Bonds. If the circumstances were ideal for one aloof star, why not two? The stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com has the Hornsby of 1922 hitting .398 with 43 home runs and 159 RBI on the 1999 Giants.

There’s another reason I think Hornsby would thrive in San Francisco. A book I have on the 25 greatest players of all-time talks about Hornsby struggling as a 19-year-old rookie and then adding 25 pounds of muscle working at his uncle’s farm and blossoming into a .300 hitter the following season. I’ll be frank. Hornsby is one of those latter day players I assume would use steroids if he’d played in the late ’90s and early ’00s. I’m assuming too that they’d take him to greater heights and allow him a better coda to his career than riding the bench his final six seasons, hitting just six home runs.

One other thing I’ll note: Hornsby was a single-minded player who didn’t watch television or read books because he figured it would hurt his eyesight. In the modern era, this zeal would make him millions. Seeing as he struggled with gambling losses near the end of his big league career and had to take a series of player-manager jobs in the minors in his 40s to make ends meet, I’d like to think he’d have an easier go of it today. Then again, he might be the next Pete Rose.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, George Case, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty O’Doul, Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Wally Bunker, Willie Mays

Jackie Robinson Day, which started in 2004 as a well intended tribute to a great American, has become a meaningless event that should but will not be cancelled.

Many fans celebrated Robinson’s day on April 15th, the actual calendar date in 1947 that he first took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Since the Pirates have been out of town for a week, Pittsburgh and other teams that were on the road will honor Robinson on April 22nd, preposterous though that is.

What we have is every player wearing #42, officially retired from use in 1997, even though they can’t tell you much more about Robinson than that he was Major League Baseball’s first African-American and that he suffered many indignities throughout his career. My educated guess is that if the nearly 1,000 major league players, coaches and managers were asked to write an intelligent 200-word essay about Robinson, the majority couldn’t do it. Neither could the fans. If the MLB’s original intention was to illuminate fans about Robinson’s contributions to the civil rights movement and American eventual integration, then it’s failed. The average person doesn’t know much more about Robinson today than he did seven—or even 20— years ago.

The irony is that since Robinson Day was launched, the percentage of baseball’s African-Americans has declined while Hispanic players have increased. Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen has long lobbied that Roberto Clemente’s number 21 should also be retired and that the Puerto Rican should like Robinson have a day of his own.

What about other pioneer players from foreign countries? Should there be days for the first Dominican, Venezuelan and Japanese players? In our politically correct society, wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? After all, they’ve assumed an increasingly prominent role in baseball. (For the record they are Ozzie Virgil, Chico Carrasquel and Masanori Murakami.)

I’m not really suggesting that the former San Francisco Giants’ Murakami, an above average pitcher, would in any way be the equal to Robinson. But I’m sure that Asian advocacy groups could make a case on his behalf. Some one could argue that Murakami paved the way for one of the greatest hitters of our era, Ichiro Suzuki. Furthermore, Murakami a non-English speaker, must have faced many uncomfortable barriers that included racial slurs during his 1964-1965 career.

Once organized professional sports goes down the tributary road, it never ends. Over the weekend, I noticed that the Los Angeles Dodgers are wearing #4 (Snider) while both the Tigers and the Reds have “Sparky” emblazoned on their sleeves. The Pirates trumped the Dodgers and Reds with a two-fer. Inside a Willie Stargell star, which the slugger gave out to teammates who made the largest contribution in winning efforts, is #7, former manager Chuck Tanner’s number. Stargell has been dead for a decade; Tanner, for a month.

Happily, I’m not alone in my skepticism. When he was still with the Minnesota Twins, Torii Hunter said in reference to Robinson Day: “This is supposed to be an honor and just a handful of guys wearing the number. Now you’ve got entire teams doing it. I think we’re killing the meaning. It should be special wearing Jackie’s number, not just because it looks cool.”

CC Sabathia, who decries the diminishing numbers of African Americans in the game, agrees with Hunter: “It kind of waters it down. I could see the Dodgers since that was his team, but not everyone else.”

We live in the era of overkill. If something is good, then multiplied by ten, it becomes ten times better especially if it might help sell tickets or merchandise.

A couple weeks ago, I made a batting order of my favorite writers. Inspired by a post from Joe Posnanski which compared Manny Ramirez and Lyndon Johnson, I’ve decided to go one step further and offer a starting lineup of former US presidents. These aren’t my favorite presidents, necessarily, and this isn’t meant to correspond closely to playing ability, which is why I didn’t include former amateur players Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush. But I believe my players would bring other strengths to this team and make it a memorable one.

The team is as follows:

P- Thomas Jefferson: A good pitcher is creative, visionary, and smart, and Jefferson was all of these things and more between writing the Declaration of Independence, designing his country estate, Monticello and the University of Virginia. As a plus, he was tall for the 18th century at just under 6’3″ which is like 6’8″ in today’s terms. For height, Jefferson was the Randy Johnson of presidents. The fact that Jefferson could write with either hand might not hurt him on this team, either.

C- Teddy Roosevelt: Who better for catcher than a future president who insisted on fighting in the Spanish American War, a man with an oak barrel in place of an upper body, a fellow whose face on Mount Rushmore seems to say, Go ahead and try to beat that tag, this isn’t going to end well. Even Pete Rose would shy from the confrontation.

1B- George Washington: First base is a good place for mythical stoics and leaders, which suggests America’s first president. There was talk of making him king in his time, though Washington declined it for fear of being a monarch. Nonetheless, his presence on this team would be regal.

2B- Lyndon Johnson: As Posnanski wrote, LBJ was famous in his many years in Congress for the influence he wielded over other lawmakers, often able to push successfully for their votes. He’d thrive at a position where he’d get a high number of opportunities in the field and a chance to matter in a good chunk of the plays.

SS- John F. Kennedy: JFK would be one of the stars of this team with his good looks and natural athletic ability, even if he demonstrates an ill-advised though effective penchant for performing Ozzie Smith-esque back flips at short. He’d form an interesting double play combo with his former vice president Johnson who may or may not have factored into his assassination.

3B- Abraham Lincoln: At 6’4″ Lincoln is this team’s tallest member, which allows for a looping pull swing. One of history’s greatest if homeliest presidents, Lincoln also pre-qualifies for baseball’s All Ugly Team.

RF- Warren Harding: Fred Lieb noted in his memoir that Babe Ruth was a Democrat but almost endorsed Harding in the 1920 Presidential Election in exchange for $4,000. Thus, we’ll give Ruth’s position to Harding, whose presidency was marked by the Tea Pot Dome Scandal and his death two years in.

CF- Richard Nixon: I’m guessing Tricky Dick could play a deceptively shallow center field, Tris Speaker in the field with Albert Belle’s abrasiveness. His third person, post-game interviews would be classic, with quips like, “Dick Nixon knew that if Tim Wakefield threw him the knuckler again, this game was over.”

LF- Ulysses Grant: Rounding out the all-controversial outfield is Grant who succeeded greatly as a Civil War general and then struggled as president in the following decade. He was at least better than the man who came before him, Andrew Johnson (who gave his vice presidential confirmation speech before Senate drunk in 1864) and his successor, Rutherford B. Hayes (who essentially ended Reconstruction.) I’m willing to give Grant a shot.

I don’t know why the recent revelations concerning Manny Ramirez have struck such a chord with me. Maybe it was the final straw that broke the camel’s back after all these years of what has turned out to be many false hero worships. After all, the now seemingly endless procession of star baseball players who have been found guilty or are at least under suspicion of cheating should have numbed me by this point. This has happened to many baseball fans that have made their collective “enough already” feelings well known over the past few months. My anger, while ebbing and flowing, had continued to resurface on occasion.

When announcers recite the lofty statistics of an Alex Rodriguez or a Barry Bonds or a Roger Clemens or a Sammy Sosa and compare them to those players they are passing or have passed it’s as if those untainted numbers from the past mean nothing. How dare they compare.

There has been little, if any, accountability thrust upon these players.  Their numbers still count and their bank accounts are still safe. Certainly, viable proof of deeds done before the decision to ban those various substances which inflated those numbers is all but impossible to obtain.  Besides, say many, those substances were not illegal then and everyone was doing them anyway, thus leveling the playing field.

There are also the Andy Pettittes who vehemently deny, then admit it’s possible they may have, then after much questioning, crocodile tears at the ready, admit that, yes, they did use these performance enhancing drugs and are very sorry.  Perhaps sorry that they got caught but that is all. Resplendent with finger waving and pointing and with a suddenly authoritative voice, they defend themselves to any who will still listen and assure us that they may have been guilty once but never since and never again

Worst of all are those players who profess innocence based on ignorance.  I was fortunate enough to have covered the Triple A Ottawa Lynx during the 2006/2007 seasons, conducting clubhouse interviews after each home game,  and can state unequivocally that no player ingests or is injected with anything the nature of which he is not completely aware. Major league players making millions more dollars would be even more cautious. Their bodies are their livelihood and are considered sacred.

Which brings me back to Manny. Manny seemed like a great player, certainly a hitter as few has ever been. He was capable of carrying his entire team on his back when needed and in the clutch he was unstoppable. Even the mighty Yankees feared him like they feared no one else for he was a Yankee killer, a player who rose to the occasion no matter how high or difficult. After being traded (given) to the Los Angeles Dodgers, he worked his magic there, if only for one season. He made the lackluster and under achieving Dodgers worth watching, at least for one season.  His antics were fun if not cause for head shaking. He made you stay in your seat or your chair until his at bat was done. Manny was pure baseball fun no matter how you looked at it or which team you cheered for. He seemed to find a joy in the game like few others.

I get no joy from watching an Alex Rodriguez. He doesn’t seem to get any joy out of playing either as he continues his tainted rise up into the heights achieved by Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron and Willie Mays. His statistics are meaningless, as if he had never played the game. His career, when finally over, should be quickly forgotten.  An asterisk isn’t enough.

Listening to the denials of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens reminds one only of our politicians, who can deny, justify and then excuse any action with the egotistical expectation of continuing to be loved and respected. The during and/or post trial silences of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmiero have been deafening. Their ilk should also be quickly forgotten.

Manny already is forgotten. It could have and should have been a career to celebrate. Instead, the joy, the antics the wonder of it were all one big lie. You can tell me that the real world is like that and that I’m being naïve. Maybe you’re right and the righteous values our parents taught us really do mean nothing and that they were wrong. I couldn’t live that way, wouldn’t want to even if I could. Not for all the mansions and Mercedes and movie starlets in the world.

One of the most memorable baseball events that I recall from my years living in Manhattan took place off the field. In 1973, two New York Yankee pitchers, Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich traded families.

Peterson traded his wife, Marilyn, his two kids and a poodle for Susan Kekich, the two Kekich children and a Bedlington terrier. “We didn’t trade wives; we traded lives,” said Kekich at the time.

As strange as this may sound nearly 40 years later, the incident didn’t make that much of a splash. The ten years between 1965 and 1975 were characterized by liberal, uninhibited sexual attitudes. Wife swapping, although normally limited to an evening or weekend, was not unheard of. And the 1970’s were the days before the 24-hour news cycle. Tabloids covered Peterson-Kekich but mostly through the daily newspapers. After a month, the story gave way to traditional journalism.

The revised marital arrangement worked out much better for Peterson than Kekich. Peterson remains married to Susan and had four children. Kekich and Marilyn split after a couple of months. Eventually, Kekich remarried and had a daughter.

Now suddenly, with the leading protagonists in their mid-60s, Peterson-Kekich is in the headlines again.

A new movie starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, The Trade, is in its second rewrite. Producers hope to release it next year. Kekich, who thinks hanging out his dirty laundry again after all these years is “unfair,” is working hard to block the film. According to an inside source: “Kekich is panic-stricken. He has moved away and has a new identity. He is freaked out that those working on the movie found out where he is. He isn’t too keen on having the scandal dredged up again after all this time.

Peterson, it should be remembered, was an outstanding lefty for the Yankees in the years leading up to the scandal. His 2.52 ERA is the best ever posted at Yankee Stadium. Hall of Famer Whitey Ford is second with a 2.55 ERA. During his 9 seasons with the then-mediocre Yankees, Peterson posted a 133-131 record with a 3.30 ERA and one 20 game season. Notoriously stingy with bases on balls, Peterson issued an average of only 1.7 during his eleven year career.

Peterson’s career fell off after the swap but not as dramatically as Kekich’s who said that his life became “a black hole” after the ill-fated affair. Kekich’s lifetime stats: 39-51, 4.59 ERA

On this one, I’m with Kekich. I doubt if Affleck, Damon or anyone else associated with the movie would like a full length account of their most ill-conceived personal decisions turned into a fictionalized, full-length movie.

• I saw a link to this article– Barry Bonds Is An Asshole. But His Conviction Is Pointless.— and thought it was some random blogger going for shock. It’s actually a Village Voice piece with an interesting question: Why should the federal government try a baseball player for allegedly lying about using steroids which weren’t illegal or banned by baseball at the time? Moreover, why is it perjury for someone to lie about something that wasn’t a crime? I don’t know if I agree, since Bonds’ alleged perjury came in testimony before a grand jury investigating BALCO and any lies he told could have hindered that, but it’s an interesting question nonetheless.
• Speaking of Barry, Rob Neyer thinks it’s “likely” he’ll get in the Hall of Fame– through the writers, too, not just the Veterans Committee route which has seemed like the only one for any player accused of using steroids.
• World War II baseball blogger Gary Bedingfield has undertaken a cool project. Acknowledging that most of the minor league ballplayers who died in that war never appeared on a baseball card, Gary has created an Ultimate Sacrifice Baseball Card Set for his site.
• Another great post from Josh Wilker, this one on the underrated Amos Otis, who was ranked by Bill James as the 22nd greatest center fielder of all time and apparently used a bat with “enough cork and superballs in there to blow away anything.”
• Joe Posnanski writes a post relating Manny Ramirez, the Hall of Fame, and former president Lyndon Johnson which, he writes, “gives you a pretty good idea about how my ridiculous mind works and why I didn’t get many dates as a young man.” Yes, but I say a little esoteric knowledge in history never hurt anyone, speaking as someone who spent part of Thursday evening reading an excerpt of The Selling of the President while in the bathroom. I’ll find a way to tie Richard Nixon into an upcoming post.
• I grew up in Sacramento, have long been a Kings fan (in bad times and good and bad again), and have resigned myself to the strong possibility my team could be moving to Anaheim next year. Team ownership has until Monday to file relocation papers, and if it goes through, the Kings have already played their last game in Sacramento, and I’ll have to contemplate the bleak prospect of becoming a Warriors fan. It’s nice to see my hometown get some words of support from, of all places, a Yankees blog.

What he did: Irvin came up Sunday night during Baseball by the Bay, a podcast I do for Seamheads.com with fellow Society for American Baseball Research member Paul Hirsch. Early in the show, Paul spoke of attending a San Francisco Giants game last weekend and watching the team be presented with rings for winning the 2010 World Series. Paul said four of the six living Hall of Famers who did their best work as Giants– Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, and Gaylord Perry– were honored at the event, with only Juan Marichal and Irvin not present. It got me thinking more about Irvin, one of the better What Ifs? in baseball history.

Irvin was among the first Negro League greats elected to Cooperstown and shined in a short big league career, debuting in 1949 at 30, two years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. Playing until 1956, Irvin spent all but his final season with the Giants and peaked in 1951 when he led New York to the World Series, finished third in MVP voting, and mentored a rookie Mays. One can only wonder how much segregation limited Irvin’s lifetime stats. Other factors held him back, too, like a broken ankle in 1952 that limited his season and left him injury prone the rest of his career. In addition, the Giants’ vast home park, the Polo Grounds favored pitchers.

In a more recent era with better medical care off the field and more favorable conditions for hitters on it and of course no racial restrictions to play a full career, there’s no telling what Irvin might have done.

Era he might have thrived in: We’ll transport Irvin to the 1990s and the Texas Rangers, to a team that played in a veritable bandbox during one of the great ages in baseball history for hitters. The thought here is that Irvin would easily top 3,000 hits lifetime, provided he stayed healthy and that he’d rival Tony Gwynn as the best contact hitter of the ’90s.

Why: It may not be possible to accurately project stats from a 15 or 20-year big league career for Irvin, though a number of things hint at the success he might have achieved.

There’s Irvin’s 1951 season, where he hit .312 with 24 homers, 121 RBI, and an OPS+ of 147. Bobby Thomson hit eight more homers and had an OPS+ of 150, though the team was nothing special offensively, hitting .260. How the Giants scored 781 runs, won 98 regular season games, and lost in the World Series seems illogical, though players have admitted in recent years that the club stole hitting signals from opponents during its fabled pennant drive. It’s still noteworthy Irvin had a great year in a park where center field practically had its own time zone.

Interestingly, Irvin had almost identical batting average at home and on the road, though his slugging percentage was nearly 100 points higher outside the Polo Grounds. If we move him to Texas in 1996, his stats convert to 29 home runs, 158 RBI, and a .345 batting average. He’d get another shot at the postseason as well, as the Rangers won 90 games and the American League West and lost in the AL Division Series to the Yankees. Irvin would be another weapon for a Rangers club that featured MVP Juan Gonzalez and five other players with at least 80 RBI.

Irvin would have more going for him in this baseball generation than good teammates and a cushy ballpark, though. I must say that I admire anyone who could make a late go of it in the majors after starring for years in the harsh conditions of the Negro Leagues, where players endured poverty and very strenuous travel conditions. Perhaps there’s a certain nobility and sense of purpose that comes in suffering, though I’d like to think that playing in a time where his financial and health needs would be vastly more secured, Irvin would do ever greater.

Irvin turned 92 in February and reportedly didn’t travel to the Giants’ ceremony for health reasons. I’m pleased the team retired his number and honored him at its 50th anniversary of moving to San Francisco two years ago. One can wonder what might have been with Irvin, but that being said, there’s plenty to celebrate about the man.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, George Case, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty O’Doul, Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Wally Bunker, Willie Mays

I’m dedicating this post to all my good friends who are devoted Boston Red Sox fans. As of Wednesday morning, their team stands at 2-9. Many have edged dangerously close to the ledge. If only they had heeded my spring training observation: before printing the World Series tickets, there’s that small formality of playing the games.

To lift my friends’ spirits, I’ll transport them back to a time when the Red Sox had bats booming and pitchers dominating. If fact, so lively were the Sox bats that they scored a record 17 runs in a single inning.

The Sox scoring extravaganza lasted two days. On June 17, 1953, the Red Sox destroyed Detroit Tiger pitching by racking up 20 hits against four hurlers in a 17-1 rout.

Watching from the bull pen, Steve Gromek who had just joined the Tigers via a trade with the Cleveland Indians sympathized with his new teammates.

What Gromek didn’t know at the time was that on the very next day in his Tigers’ debut, he would be mauled much worse. With Ned Garver starting for the Tigers, the game remained competitive into the sixth inning, a 3-3 tie. But when Garver walked the leadoff man, had an error committed behind him and gave up back to back singles that allowed two runs to score, manager Fred Hutchinson summoned Gromek who got the final two outs.

Unfortunately for Gromek, Hutchinson left him in for the seventh. Gromek retired only one batter, gave up seven hits including a home run, three walks and nine earned runs. After Hutchinson mercifully lifted Gromek, Dick Weik took over and, unbelievably, did worse. Weik’s line: IP, .1;  H, 3; BB, 1; ER, 4,   Hutchinson gave Weik the hook in favor of Earl Harrist whose pitching line was the best of the three “firemen”:  IP 1.1; H, 7; ER 5; BB, 3; SO, 1. By the time the Boston half of the 48-minute seventh ended, the Red Sox had scored 17 runs on 14 hits (three by Gene Stephens and two each by Sammy White and Tom Umphlett) en route to 23-3 win.

For the afternoon, Billy Goodman had five hits and White, four. In all, the Red Sox broke or tied 16 American League offensive records. For the two days, the Red Sox scored 40 runs on 47 hits.

Interviewed after the game, Gromek said: “I never saw anything like it. They got some clean hits but most of them were flukes. The ball kept bouncing out of reach of our infielders or just in of our outfielders.”

But as proof that you never know in baseball, five days later to Gromek’s amazement and without any forewarning, Hutchinson handed him the ball and said: “You pitch today.” Gromek shut out the Philadelphia A’s 5-0 on only four hits. No Philadelphia batter reached third base.

Recalled Gromek years later: “I was flabbergasted. I thought I would never pitch again at least not for Detroit.”