July 27, 1963: Henry Aaron drives Reds dizzy in Braves’ win

Henry Aaron combined power and speed as one of the game’s great all-around players. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

The Milwaukee Braves suffered their worst defeat of the 1963 season, 11-1, on Friday night, July 26, at the hands of the Cincinnati Reds, who won their sixth of eight contests vs. Milwaukee. On Saturday afternoon, July 27, at Milwaukee’s County Stadium, the home team hoped to return to both .500 and seventh place.

The lineups had an interesting makeup with three future Hall of Famers, all members of the 500-home-run club,1 but they had no dingers this day. There were also three rookies – the Braves starting pitcher seeking his second career victory; the eventual National League Rookie of the Year, who became baseball’s tarnished hit king; and Reds outfielder Tommy Harper, who would set a Milwaukee franchise single-season stolen-base record while playing only one game in the Beer City without a steal that season.2 With the Aarons, Henry and his younger brother by 4 ½ years, Tommie in the lineup, they were the Braves’ fifth set of brothers.3 Together they slugged 768 home runs, the siblings record. Also, six future managers, who won 2,421 games, took the field on July 27.4

Cincinnati’s Joey Jay, the first Little Leaguer to make the majors, took the mound against his former team of seven years both starting and relieving with a 24-24 record before being traded by Milwaukee to Cincinnati in 1961.5 This was the tall right-hander’s 18th start of the season. He often pitched with shoulder soreness, leading to 4 wins and 14 losses, and he had been beaten twice by Milwaukee.6 Bob Sadowski, a 25-year-old rookie acquired in June for Braves legend Lew Burdette, was making his sixth start. The righty won his first game in his previous start against the Los Angeles Dodgers, following four losses. Both starters pitched through six innings before being relieved, and neither figured in the decision.

Cincinnati scored a first-inning run with a leadoff single by the eventual Rookie of the Year, Pete Rose, who was forced at second base on rookie right fielder Tommy Harper’s fielder’s choice. Harper proceeded to swipe second – his fourth steal of the season – and scored on first baseman Gordy Coleman’s double to left field. Jay worked out of a jam in the bottom half, fanning the first two batters. Then Henry Aaron, singled, advanced to second base on his 17th stolen base and took third on a wild pitch with Lee Maye at bat, Maye later walked, putting runners on the corners. Mack Jones’s pop foul to catcher Johnny Edwards ended the inning with the Reds leading 1-0.

The Reds scored twice in the third, boosting their lead to 3-0. Rose scored on Vada Pinson’s single after reaching base on a fielder’s choice and taking second on Harper’s sacrifice. Sadowski walked Coleman, sending Pinson to second, and Pinson came home on Frank Robinson’s single. In the Braves’ half of the inning, Denis Menke singled and Eddie Mathews walked, setting up Aaron’s double that brought in Menke. Jones’s sacrifice fly scored Mathews and Milwaukee trailed 3-2.

Tommie Aaron, making his second consecutive start at second base, led off the bottom of the fourth with a walk. The younger Aaron debuted the previous year, primarily playing first base and the outfield and was considered Joe Adcock’s successor at first base when the veteran was traded to Cleveland during the offseason. But he didn’t succeed. Braves manager Bobby Bragan explained: “He plays as good a first base as anybody in baseball, but I’m not sure he can hit well enough to play it in the big leagues.”7 Tommie Aaron, unlike his brother, lacked power. The experiment at the keystone sack was short-lived; he started only once more.8 Del Crandall bunted and reached base on an error by Jay. Tommie advanced to second but was forced on another bunt by Sadowski back to Jay. A two-out single by Eddie Mathews sent Crandall home with the tying run.

The tie was short-lived: Rose smacked his second hit starting the fifth frame. He went to second on a walk to Harper, took third as Pinson hit into a double play, and scored from third on Coleman’s infield hit, giving Cincinnati a 4-3 lead.

Both starting pitchers were pulled for pinch-hitters after pitching six innings. Gene Oliver, obtained in the Burdette deal with Sadowski, pinch-hit for Sadowski, grounding out to second in the bottom of the sixth. Bob Skinner, obtained in May from the Pittsburgh Pirates, walked hitting for Jay leading off the seventh facing Sadowski’s replacement, right-hander Hank Fischer, making his 21st appearance – all but three out of the bullpen – and he was facing Cincinnati for the first time. He struck out Rose, the only time in the game he was kept off the bases. Fischer allowed a bunt single by Harper, but got out of the inning by whiffing Coleman.

Coming in to pitch the bottom of the seventh, Jim Owens was about to run into a buzz saw named Henry Aaron. Owens was making his 19th appearance and facing Milwaukee for the third time in July after two successful two-inning stints in which he yielded one hit and no runs.

Mathews, leading off the Braves’ seventh, tripled. During a six-week period he had batted .185 but started breaking out of the doldrums on July 20, hitting 10-for-28 since. He was hoping it was over but declared, “It’s tough to put into words. I know it doesn’t sound like it makes sense. But now, even when I hit the ball good sometimes, it doesn’t feel right.” The lefty continued, “I go up there, and I don’t have the confidence about a home run.”9

Next up, Henry Aaron – who the 6,845 fans in the stands thought was in all of the action – was just starting to make a difference. He singled in the tying run. Lee Maye, directed to bunt Aaron to second, popped up to the pitcher. Owens, thinking he had an opportunity for a double play, let the ball fall and threw to first base. Aaron dashed madly to second base and beat the throw, avoiding being doubled up.10 He wasn’t done running. With Jones at bat, he stole third base, his 18th theft in 21 attempts and third two-steal game of the season, a career best. (Aaron finished the season with 31 stolen bases, his season-best and second to the Dodgers’ Maury Wills, who led the National League with 40.11 With the leading run on third, Cincinnati manager Fred Hutchinson relieved Owens with southpaw Bill Henry, inheriting a 2-and-1 count on left-hand-hitting Mack Jones. Bragan countered with right-handed Frank Bolling, whose squeeze-play sacrifice drove in Aaron with the go-ahead run. As the Milwaukee Journal’s Bob Wolf summarized, “]T]he Braves would not have made it if Aaron had not driven the Reds dizzy with his hitting and running.”12

In the Reds’ eighth, Fischer walked the leadoff batter, Frank Robinson, and was relieved by Bob Shaw. With over 140 starts, Shaw was working more in relief after struggling as a starter early in the season, and in the wake of a May 4 record-setting five balks in 4⅓ innings. Doing well in the new role, he tossed the final two innings, yielding no runs with only one hit to Rose, who had three hits for the ninth time in his rookie season, and in consecutive games. This would have been Shaw’s eighth save if that statistic had been tracked in 1963. The Reds’ Bill Henry came back out to pitch the last of the eighth and did so easily, getting a strikeout and double play, facing only three batters.

For the Braves, Hank Fischer earned the win, his third with two losses. With a third of an inning pitched, Jim Owens suffered his second loss without a win as well as demotion to San Diego of the Pacific Coast League. He would not pitch for Cincy again after being selected by Houston in that winter’s Rule 5 draft.

Cincinnati won the season series vs. Milwaukee, 10 victories to 8, and finished in fifth place with an 86-76 record, 13 games behind the first-place Dodgers. The Braves finished at 84-78 in sixth place, 15 games out. Milwaukee also finished above .500 for the 11th consecutive season, their entire tenure in Wisconsin.

SOURCES

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MLN/MLN196307270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B07270MLN1963.htm

NOTES

1  Henry Aaron, 755, Frank Robinson, 586, and Eddie Mathews 512. Henry was 4½ years older than Tommie.

2  In both 1968 and 1969, the Chicago White Sox played each major-league team in one game in Milwaukee. Harper was with the Seattle Pilots in 1969 and they played their only game in Milwaukee County Stadium on June 16. Harper was 0-for-4 with a run scored and no stolen bases. For the year, he swiped 73 bases. In 1970 when the Pilots were bought out of bankruptcy court becoming the Brewers, that became the franchise’s season stolen-base record and it still holds even though he never stole a base for Milwaukee that season.

3  Fred and Lefty Tyler (1914), Joe and Red Shannon (1915), Lloyd and Paul Waner (both Hall of Famers, 1941), Frank and Joe Torre (1960). “Brothers as Teammates in MLB History,” MLB.com, January 24, 2013.

4  Del Crandall 364-469; Eddie Kasko 345-295; Eddie Mathews 149-161; Frank Robinson, the first African American manager, 1,065-1,176; Pete Rose 412-373; and Bob Skinner 93-123; totaling 2,428 wins and 2,597 losses.

5  Joey Jay became a full-time starting pitcher with Cincinnati and won 21 games in each of his first two years, leading the league in 1961, when he made his only All-Star Game roster. He tossed a complete-game victory against the Yankees in Game Two of the 1961 World Series. He lost the decisive Game Five, not getting out of the first inning. Jay won only seven times in 1963. Regarding his Little League background, see the September 30, 1953, game account by Thomas F. Brown Jr., “Joey Jay becomes first former Little Leaguer to start a game in the major leagues,” SABR Games Project.

6  In his first two years in Cincinnati, Jay won seven with one loss in nine appearances against the Braves.

7  Bob Wolf, “When You Don’t Succeed at First (Base), Try Second,” Milwaukee Journal, July 28,1963: 3.

8  Tommie Aaron started only three consecutive games July 26, 27, and 28 at second and made one last appearance there on September 11, replacing Frank Bolling in the sixth inning during a 14-3 Reds’ blowout.

9  Terry Bledsoe, “Is Mathews’ Long Slump Over?” Milwaukee Journal, July 28, 1963: Sports News 1.

10  Bob Wolf, “Braves Rally to Knock Off Reds, 5-4,” Milwaukee Journal, July 28, 1963: Sports News 1.

11  “MLB Batting Leaders – Stolen Bases,” ESPN.com. Luis Aparicio of the Baltimore Orioles led the American League, also with 40.

12  Wolf, “Braves Rally to Knock Off Reds, 5-4.”