June 28, 1942: Tommy Hughes’ marathon

During the 1942 season, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Philadelphia Phillies finished at opposite ends of the National League. The Phillies finished in the basement, while the Cardinals won the pennant on their way to another World Series title. On June 28 the two teams faced off in a doubleheader at Shibe Park. While the Cardinals captured the second game, the Phillies won a memorable opener that featured performances from two young pitchers enjoying the best seasons of their short careers. The Cardinals’ Johnny Beazley held the Phillies to one run in his 12 innings of work and showed signs of the pitcher who would slay the New York Yankees in the World Series. The Phillies’ Tommy Hughes, however, emerged as the doubleheader’s top star. Hughes pitched all 15 innings, held the potent Cardinals lineup to one run, and put his team in position to score the winning run before he left the game for a pinch-runner in the 15th inning.

Heading into the doubleheader, the Phillies and the Cardinals had compiled very different records. The Phillies stood at the bottom of the National League with a paltry record of 18-48. The Cardinals had a more impressive record of 36-26, but it paled in comparison to the 46-17 record of the first-place Brooklyn Dodgers. The season before, St. Louis had finished in second place behind the Dodgers, and the team had entered the season with aspirations of winning the pennant. The four-game series at Shibe Park ended a 12-game road trip in which the Cardinals had won only one series and four games. Those losses put them a daunting 9½ games behind the Dodgers and seemed to put their goal of the National League pennant out of reach. A four-game series against the lowly Phillies appeared to offer the Cardinals a chance to get their season back on track. Phillies manager Hans Lobert had fined several players for “indifferent work” and had ordered every player to attend morning practice.1 Lobert also lambasted his players as “’tootsie roll’ and ‘ice cream cone’ warriors” who “lacked fight and dash.”2

Rain greeted the Cardinals’ arrival in Philadelphia and shortened the four-game series to a doubleheader on Sunday, June 28. Despite the postponements, for game one of the twin bill the managers went with the starters they had previously planned to use in the series opener – Beazley and Hughes. At the time, Beazley was in the middle of his first full season with the Cardinals. He had battled through adversity and an elbow injury in the minors before joining the Cardinals in the 1941 season when the rosters expanded in September. He earned his first victory for the Cardinals on the final day of the 1941 season. Heading into game one of the June 28 doubleheader, Beazley had a 6-4 record; his opponent, Hughes, had a lackluster record of 2-9.

Stan Musial scored the Cardinals’ lone run of the marathon opener in the fourth inning. He reached base on a single, moved to third on a single by catcher Ken O’Dea, and scored on a fly ball by first baseman Ray Sanders. After their 15-inning, 2-1 defeat, the Cardinals won game two, 3-1, but the lackluster offensive performance in game one seemed to encapsulate all of the ills facing the club and kept them nine games behind the Dodgers.3

In its coverage of the doubleheader’s first game, the Philadelphia Inquirer focused on the heroics of the pitcher Hughes. Hughes was in his second season with the Phillies; in his rookie campaign, he made 24 starts in 34 games and ended with a record of 9-14.4 The newspaper called game one “a thriller from the start” and asserted that Hughes had “never pitched with more skill and more poise.”5 Hughes also demonstrated “the fortitude of a Spartan” and pitched “the most spectacular game of his career.”6 Third baseman Danny Murtaugh, who got three hits in the contest, started the game with a single to the center field. Murtaugh did not advance past second base; the next batter, center fielder Lloyd Waner, hit into a fielder’s choice that sent Murtaugh back to the dugout. The Phillies scored the game’s first run in the first inning and mounted scoring threats in the seventh, 10th, 11th, and 13th innings. They finally broke through in the 15th inning when Stan Benjamin, running for Hughes, crossed the plate after Ernie Koy slapped the game-winning single. Hughes had reached base after reliever Howie Krist hit him with a pitch. Krist (3-1) took the loss for the Cardinals.

Hughes’ heroics went beyond pitching 15 innings and getting on base in the 15th inning after being hit by a pitch; he collapsed in the dugout in the bottom half of the 10th inning. Hughes had beat out a bunt, then reached second base on a wild pitch, and third on an error by catcher Ken O’Dea on a pickoff play. Hughes did not score, and the exertion on the basepath apparently triggered his collapse in the dugout. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Phillies’ physician revived him, and he then returned to the field to pitch in the top of the 11th inning. He remained in the game until Lobert replaced him with pinch-runner Benjamin in the 15th inning.

Clearly standing out as the game’s best performer, Hughes pitched all 15 innings, exerted himself to the point of collapse, and might have scored the winning run if the manager hadn’t lifted him for a pinch-runner. Hughes’s efforts earned accolades from both the hometown coverage of the game and from the more sedate coverage provided in the St. Louis newspapers. The St. Louis Post Dispatch called Hughes “an admirable stripling” and that the Cardinals, aside from Musial, “displayed no inclination to trifle” with the young pitcher.7 With his victory, Hughes improved his season record to 3-9 on his way to a record of 12-18 and an ERA of 3.06.

Overall, the game offered an interesting prism to analyze each team’s 1942 season. Despite the Cardinals’ dismal performance in June 1942, they would go on to win the National League pennant and the World Series. Beazley would emerge as one of the Cardinals’ stars and finished with a record of 21-6, the best of his short career. He won two games in the World Series, including the final game at Yankee Stadium. World War II interrupted and shortened his promising career. He won only nine games after returning from the war. Like Beazley, Hughes would also enjoy the best season of his short career in 1942 before departing for service in World War II. He appeared in 40 games, started 31 of them, and pitched 19 complete games. His 12 wins were the most wins he had in a single season in his five-year career. Hughes also notched career highs in games started and complete games, and he finished with the lowest single-season ERA of his career. The Phillies, however, went on to their third consecutive last-place finish in the National League. The team’s 42 victories left them 62½ games behind the first-place Cardinals, who ended the season with 102 victories.8 For a brief moment on June 28, 1942, however, a very different outcome to the season seemed possible for both teams. The game, ultimately, showcased how baseball can often be a game of quirks and how one regular-season game often does not define a baseball team’s season.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and SABR.org.

NOTES

1 Steve Grauley, “Cards’ Game Again Postponed: Play Phils Twice Tomorrow,” St. Louis Star and Times, June 27, 1942: 4.

2 Grauley.

3 “Weather Stops the Redbirds,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, June 27, 1942: 7; Stan Baumgartner, “Rain, Not Brooklyn, Is the Biggest Headache for St. Louis; Pilot Southworth Moans Over Enforced Idleness; Meet Phils Twice Today,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 28, 1942: 35; “Cards Split; To Play 22 Home Games,” St. Louis Star and Times, June 29, 1942: 16; John Fuqua, “Johnny Beazley,” SABR BioProject, sabr.org/bioproj/person/82e225d5; “Johnny Beazley,” Baseball Reference.com.baseball-reference.com/players/b/beazljo01.shtml.

4 “Tommy Hughes,” Baseball Reference, baseball-reference.com/players/h/hugheto04.shtml.

5 Stan Baumgartner, “Phils Win 15-Inning Opener, Drop Second; Hughes Lands Thriller,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 19, 1942: 21.

6 Baumgartner.

7 “Cards Won Five, Lost Seven Games on Eastern Trip; Warneke Beats Phils After Redbirds Lose in 15-Inning Battle,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 29, 1942: 9.

8 Fuqua.