Johnnie LeMaster

When San Francisco Giants skipper Wes Westrum signaled for Johnnie LeMaster to get into the game, the 21-year-old rookie couldn’t find his glove. He had joined the team only a few hours before the afternoon contest on September 2, 1975, in Candlestick Park against the Dodgers.

“A couple of veteran players hid my glove on me,” LeMaster said. “My shoes weren’t even tied. By the time I found my glove and tied my shoes, the pitcher was ready. I didn’t get to warm up defensively.”1

Probably only a few of the 5,098 spectators that day paid much attention to the third-inning replacement for injured shortstop Chris Speier. But few would ever forget what he did when he came up to the plate in the bottom of the fourth. The right-handed-hitting LeMaster gave them what only two other major leaguers had done before, an inside-the-park home run during his first major-league at-bat.

“We were playing our big rival the (Los Angeles) Dodgers and Don Sutton was on the mound, and he’s in the Hall of Fame now. I hit an inside the park home run, the first time I ever stepped to the plate,” LeMaster said. “I still pinch myself to see whether it’s true or not.”2

Johnnie Lee LeMaster was born on June 19, 1954, in Portsmouth, Ohio, to John Lowell and Mabel (Fyffe) McMaster.3 The couple moved to Paintsville, in eastern Kentucky, with their two young sons, Link Bascom and Johnnie Lee, to be closer to family.4 LeMaster’s father worked at the Ashland Oil Catlettsburg refinery.5 His mother taught at Paintsville Elementary.6

Athletic ability ran in the LeMaster family. Johnnie’s brother, Link, excelled in golf and baseball,7 while a cousin, Frank LeMaster, played as a linebacker with the Philadelphia Eagles for nine seasons.8

By the eighth grade, Johnnie LeMaster also showed his talent for sports, particularly baseball. So much so that visiting Cincinnati Reds scout Gene Bennett gave the young LeMaster his card.9

LeMaster went on to collect 21 varsity letters at Paintsville High School, in football (as the quarterback), basketball (playing center, averaging 21 points per game), golf (high 70s), and baseball (as a pitcher and infielder for the Paintsville High Tigers).10

“It was a great memory,” LeMaster said. “I wish I could still do it. I played four sports at Paintsville. I would’ve [run] track, but when I was in high school we didn’t have a track team.”11

Through his high-school years, LeMaster’s baseball abilities continued to attract major-league attention. In his senior year, he hit .533. He also pitched, winning four games and saving three.12 

“There would be 30 scouts at every game I played,” LeMaster said. “They would come knocking on the neighbors’ doors wanting to know about me. They would show up at the high school and do eye tests and psychological tests on me.”13

In the 1973 amateur draft, Kansas City had the ninth pick and wanted to take LeMaster as a pitcher. But the Giants stepped in at number six, slotting him at the shortstop position. “I didn’t know that much about the Giants because everyone around here were Reds fans,” McMaster said. “I was watching the Big Red Machine in 1973, they were together then, and two years later I was playing against them. It was like a dream come true.”14

LeMaster was the highest draft pick from Kentucky until Morehead State University pitcher Drew Hall was picked third in 1984. As of 2024 LeMaster still was the highest-selected high schooler from Kentucky. He mostly played shortstop during his 12-year major-league career. He never got the chance to pitch in the majors.15

After the draft, the 19-year-old LeMaster spent the summer in the Rookie Pioneer League playing for the Great Falls (Montana) Giants. In 1974 he played on two Giants Class-A teams, the Decatur (Illinois) Commodores (Midwest League) and the Fresno (California) Giants (California League). He was listed at 6-feet-2 but weighed only about 160 pounds. After LeMaster joined the Giants, batting coach Jim Lefebvre said, “Basically he was a defensive hitter. The pitcher could practically knock the bat out of his hands.” But he had a good arm and was a better-than-average runner.16

In 1975 LeMaster was promoted to the Giants’ Triple-A team in Phoenix. He turned 21 in June, and on Monday, September 1, he got the call to join the Giants for the second game of a two-game series in San Francisco against the division rival Los Angeles Dodgers.

LeMaster made it to Candlestick Park just before the 2 P.M. start time on September 2. He didn’t expect to play, so he took a seat on the bench during the uncharacteristically balmy (for San Francisco) 82-degree temperature and sunny skies.17

But in the second inning, with the Dodgers leading 1-0, Giants shortstop Speier pulled a leg muscle while running out a grounder. To LeMaster’s surprise, manager Westrum signaled for him to go in as the replacement. “We had a lot of utility type players on that Giants team in ’75 and I thought for sure our manager Wes Westrum wouldn’t call on some rookie, but he did,” LeMaster said.18

Speier’s grounder was the third out in the Giants’ second. After getting himself together, LeMaster hustled out to the field barely before the Giants’ Ed Halicki threw his first pitch of the inning. Halicki retired the Dodgers, and in the bottom of the inning, the Giants scored two runs on a home run by Von Joshua.

In the Giants’ fourth, with one out, Sutton walked Gary Matthews. He scored on Willie Montañez’s double. With Montañez in scoring position, LeMaster stepped up to the plate for his first major-league at-bat. As LeMaster later recalled, Sutton threw him two curveballs that he missed “by three feet.”19

The next pitch, however, was a fastball that LeMaster smacked back up the middle. Center fielder John Hale set up to field the ball on one hop and make a play at the plate. Instead, the ball hit a seam in the Candlestick AstroTurf, bounced high over Hale’s head, and rolled to the wall.20 LeMaster flew around the bases during the scramble for the baseball, ending up at home plate on the heels of Montañez.

“You know how a kid would be coming up to the big leagues for the first time, and you’re playing your natural rival, and there’s 50,000 people in the stands. I hit every base perfect and probably never ran that fast in my life or probably ever again,” LeMaster recalled.21

LeMaster became the second San Francisco Giants player to hit a first-at-bat home run, after pitcher John Montefusco’s two-run homer on September 3, 1974.22 There have been two since, Will Clark in 1986, and Brett Pill in 2011. Six New York Giants also made the list, before the team moved west in 1958.

LeMaster’s new teammates crowded around to congratulate him when he returned to the dugout, and the small crowd gave him a standing ovation. The Giants went on to win the game 7-3. After his big hitting debut, LeMaster had two more plate appearances but didn’t get on base. He also had a quiet fielding day at short; no balls were hit his way.

LeMaster played in 21 more Giants games that year. He hit his second major-league home run on September 6 in a 3-2 loss at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, the team he had idolized as a youth. He and Speier, back from the DL, traded off at shortstop the last few games of the season.

The offseason brought changes to the Giants front office after a group of local investors took charge, fending off an eleventh-hour buyout that would have moved the team to Toronto. Called “the greatest save in Giants’ history,”23 the deal to keep the team in San Francisco wasn’t inked until well into spring training.

The turmoil at the top had little effect on LeMaster, who was returned to Triple-A Phoenix to start the 1976 season. He had to wait until August to put on a San Francisco uniform again. He made the 1977 Opening Day roster and started the second game of the season. He was back with Phoenix from May 22 to June 20, then returned to San Francisco for the rest of season.

LeMaster filled in at short (Speier was traded on April 27) and as a pinch-hitter in his 68 game appearances with the Giants. Major-league pitching took some getting used to, and LeMaster exited the 1977 season with a .149 batting, 8 RBIs, and no home runs. The legendary Candlestick infield was hard to get a read on, too. 

“It was one of the toughest infields that there was to field on,” LeMaster said. “They changed the texture of it just about every year. One year, it would be dirt and clay. The next year, it would be pea gravel. The wind would blow the top level of the dirt off by the third inning. If it was pea gravel, it would look like little hand grenades had gone off in it all over the place. But it was home.”24

The Giants stayed with the young Kentuckian, and he started 1978 with the big-league club. He played in 101 games that year. His numbers improved with the steady work, and he hit .235 in 101 games. He made 14 errors.

In 1979 LeMaster’s middling offense and spotty defense began to raise the ire of Giants fans. Along with his individual performance, LeMaster seemed to symbolize everything that was wrong with a team that hadn’t placed higher than third in the division since 1971 and was heading back into the cellar. (The Giants ended 1979 in fourth place with a record of 71-91, 19½ games behind division leader Cincinnati.)

 “Our record wasn’t the greatest the whole time that I played there,” LeMaster said. “Maybe they needed somebody to let their frustration out on, or their anger.”25

Sentiment against LeMaster’s presence in the lineup became more vocal, until he was booed by the home crowd at every at-bat. A man with strong Christian beliefs, he turned to his faith as he shouldered the verbal abuse.26 But the daily drubbing took its toll, until LeMaster’s wife, Debbie, came up with an idea to have a little fun with the fans.

“So, I was laying in bed one night and my wife sat up and said, ‘You should just change your name to Boo!’ I didn’t think about it, but a couple days later, I asked our equipment manager to make me up a jersey with “Boo” on the back of it. (And) he did.”27

LeMaster wore the jersey during the first inning of the July 23, 1979, home game against the Dodgers. “After the half-inning was over, (GM Spec) Richardson was there waiting for me with my normal jersey and he looked mad. ‘Put this on right now!’ he said.”28

The accomplice equipment manager was fired on the spot (Richardson rehired him the same night), and LeMaster was fined $500 for being out of uniform. But with his humorous act of defiance, LeMaster turned a corner with the hometown crowd. “I’d have to say it won the fans over and the reporters were all over me about it, because they love a good story. I started getting booed a lot less after that.”29

Still, the team’s playing woes continued. The boos never really went away, and the stress began to change his easy-going personality. Sportswriters learned to leave him alone, and he became a more subdued presence in the clubhouse.30

The Giants’ downward spiral hit a franchise low of sixth place in 1984, when they finished with a record of 66-96. Manager Frank Robinson was fired in August and coach Danny Ozark finished out the schedule.

At the end of the season, the 30-year-old LeMaster had a .217 batting average, with 98 hits (down from his career high of 128 the year before), and four homers. His fielding percentage of .964 ranked him fifth in the league, and he was fourth in putouts as a shortstop (222). But he committed 23 errors, for the third season in a row.

LeMaster took his regular spot on the field for Giants Opening Day on April 9, 1985, but he played only 11 more games for San Francisco. On May 7 he was traded to the Cleveland Indians for Mike Jeffcoat and Luis Quiñones. On May 8 LeMaster was in Cleveland playing shortstop against the White Sox. On May 30 he was flipped to Pittsburgh for a player to be named later. After playing in only 22 games as a Pirate, LeMaster was released by the organization two days before the start of the 1986 season. He and his wife moved with their two children back to Paintsville to be closer to family while the kids were growing up.31

LeMaster signed with Oakland in 1987 as a free agent, but he played only 20 games with the A’s. Still, while he was there, he talked with legend Reggie Jackson about the boos he’d endured across the Bay. Jackson told him, “People don’t boo nobodies. You’re somebody.” LeMaster said the comment “made me feel like a million dollars.”32 

After the Athletics released him in July 1987, LeMaster retired from the game. In his 12-year major-league career (including 1975-1985 with the Giants), he played in 1,039 games and batted .222 with 22 home runs and 229 RBIs. He stole 94 bases.

Asked about the biggest regret of his career, LeMaster put old feelings behind him. “My biggest one is never playing in a World Series. It’s the pinnacle for every player and what we all dream about. Every player wants that World Series ring. We had great fans in San Francisco and one of the things we always wanted to do was win for them and give them some bragging rights, especially against the Dodgers.”33

After his retirement, LeMaster played a year of Senior League ball with the Fort Myers Sun Sox. He also became a business owner and coached Little League.34 In 1994 he was named head baseball coach for the Pikeville College Bears, a position he held until 2006. He was honored as Coach of the Year in the Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletics Conference in 1997, and he led the program to a school-record 40 wins during the 2000 season. To recognize his achievements, the school named the baseball field after him.35

LeMaster also coached high-school ball from 2016 to 2019, when his grandsons were attending high school in Ashland, Kentucky.36 LeMaster became active in church affairs, including teaching Bible-study classes at a nearby prison.37

LeMaster was on hand for the final game at Candlestick Park in 1999, and like in the old days, the fans booed him, but with a “gentler” tone.38 At the new ballpark, there’s a plaque commemorating LeMaster’s contributions to the team, with a mention of his homer in his first at-bat.39 The Giants have also held special events in his honor. “They’ve had two Johnnie LeMaster Nights since I retired,” he said. “It’s unbelievable how the fans come up to me and say, ‘We don’t think you were treated right while you were here.’”40

There’s a fan club, not affiliated with the Giants, called the Sons of Johnnie LeMaster,41 and you can buy a LeMaster number 10 jersey at the Giants Dugout Store.42 And by the way, he still has the famous “rogue” uniform from July 1979.

“I still have that ‘Boo’ jersey and collectors from New York call me all the time wanting to buy it, but I can’t part with it,” he said.43

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Baseball Almanac, and Retrosheet.org for background information on players, teams, and seasons.

Notes

1 Tom FitzGerald, “Where Are They Now? Catching Up with Former Giants Shortstop Johnnie LeMaster,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 2019. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/Where-are-they-now-Catching-up-with-former-14465433.php, accessed May 10, 2024.

2 James Juett, “LeMaster Brings Major League Experience to Ashland,” Huntington (West Virginia) Herald-Dispatch, May 9, 2016, https://www.herald-dispatch.com/sports/lemaster-brings-major-league-experience-to-ashland/article_640d5190-6915-55e5-bdc8-f7d6a7d1c49e.html, accessed May 10, 2024.

3 “John Lowell Lemaster | 1920 – 2013 | Obituary,” Jones-Preston Funeral Home, April 29, 2013. https://www.jones-prestonfuneralhome.com/obituary/2077241, accessed May 10, 2024. Mabel’s maiden name was Fyffe. https://www.jones-prestonfuneralhome.com/obituary/mabel-lemaster, accessed May 10, 2024. John and Mabel were married 67 years at the time of John’s passing in 2013 at the age of 92. Mabel died in 2018 at the age of 95. 

4 Trevor Thacker, “Diamond Legend: Johnny LeMaster,” Paintsville (Kentucky) Herald, July 6, 2019. https://www.paintsvilleherald.com/sports/diamond-legend-johnny-lemaster/article_5a09caf8-9f67-11e9-92c0-9772d0b44d6d.html, accessed May 10, 2024.

5 Juett.

6 “Mable Fyffe LeMaster of Paintsville, Kentucky | 1922 – 2018 | Guest Book,” April 9, 2018. https://www.jones-prestonfuneralhome.com/guestbook/mabel-lemaster, accessed May 10, 2024.

7 Thacker.

8 Jeff Kerr, “Eagles Great Linebacker Frank Lemaster, Who Was Part of 1980 NFC Championship Team, Dies at Age 71,” CBSSports.com, March 25, 2023. https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/eagles-great-linebacker-frank-lemaster-who-was-part-of-1980-nfc-championship-team-dies-at-age-71/, accessed May 11, 2024.

9 Thacker.

10 Sam Miller, “They Boo Shortstops, Don’t They?” Pebble Hunting, May 10, 2023. https://pebblehunting.substack.com/p/they-boo-shortstops-dont-they, accessed May 10, 2024.

11 Thacker.

12 Miller.

13 Thacker.

14 Thacker.

15 “MLB Draft Database,” Baseball America, 1973. https://www.baseballamerica.com/draft-history/, accessed May 11, 2024.

16 Miller.

17 “September 2, 1975 Weather History at San Francisco International Airport,” Weather Spark. https://weatherspark.com/h/d/145212/1975/9/2/Historical-Weather-on-Tuesday-September-2-1975-at-San-Francisco-International-Airport-California-United-States#metar-04-00, accessed May 10, 2024.

18 Ed Attanasio, “Johnnie LeMaster,” This Great Game,  https://thisgreatgame.com/johnnie-lemaster/, accessed May 10, 2024.

19 “Giants Belt Dodgers, 7-3,” San Bernardino County (California) Sun, September 3, 1975: 35.

20 FitzGerald.

21 FitzGerald.

22 Chris Mavraedis, “’The Count’s Impressive Debut!” Mavo Books, September 3, 2020. https://mavobooks.com/2020/09/the-counts-impressive-debut/, accessed May 10, 2024.

23 Rob Garratt, “San Francisco Giants Team Ownership History,” SABR Team Ownership History Project. https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/san-francisco-giants-team-ownership-history/#_edn47, accessed May 11, 2024.

24 FitzGerald.

25 FitzGerald.

26 FitzGerald.

27 Attanasio.

28 Attanasio.

29 Attanasio.

30 Miller.”

31 Thacker.

32 FitzGerald.

33 Attanasio.

34 Thacker.

35 Stacey Walters, “Diamond Memories,” UPIKE Magazine, Fall/Winter 2020. https://issuu.com/upike/docs/fall_mag_web_final/s/11424714, accessed May 11, 2024.

36 Juett.

37 FitzGerald.

38 FitzGerald.

39 “Johnnie LeMaster San Francisco Giants Wall of Fame,” The Historical Marker Database, July 3, 2021. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=176360, accessed May 10, 2024.

40 FitzGerald.

41 “Sons of Johnnie LeMaster,” https://twitter.com/SonsofJohnnieLe, accessed May 11, 2024.

42 “Johnnie LeMaster Jersey,” SF Giants Store, “https://www.sfgiantsfansstore.com/Johnnie_Lemaster_Jersey-140, accessed May 11, 2024.

43 Attanasio.