The Rangers spent their spring in Pompano Beach, Florida, trying to sort out who was going to play where. Manager Ted Williams had numerous gaps to fill in the field, and while he had the players, he didn’t know which position was best for each of them. To make matters worse, his ace pitcher, Denny McLain, had spent the whole winter complaining and was eventually traded in the middle of spring training; and his top slugger, Frank Howard, was holding out in a contract dispute, which wasn’t resolved until March 29.

The California Angels were at their spring-training camp in Palm Springs, California, where the biggest story was the appointment of Del Rice as the new manager. The Angels had struggled the previous year, far below expectations. The team had been made over, with several comings and goings both on- and off-field as they tried to improve. Because of this, there were several positions open for competition during the spring, especially at catcher and in the outfield.

But on April 1 everything came to a stop. On that day the Major League Baseball Players Association called a strike, the first player strike in major-league history. Players were demanding an increase in pension payments, something the owners refused. As the days dragged on, the players were locked out of ballparks and training facilities, and ended up gathering in self-organized sessions. The leagues started canceling games as the scheduled Opening Day of April 5 came and went. Rice was disappointed that his managerial debut would be delayed. “All I ever wanted was to become a big league manager. I finally get the job and the players quit.”1

The Rangers were hurt more than most. Having just moved the franchise, owner Bob Short was looking forward to a grand extravaganza at home on April 6, to introduce the team to the North Texas public. As it was, manager Ted Williams was at the ballpark that day with a group of media, to talk about the prospects for the season, but the players and fans waited things out. Williams wasn’t sure about his team’s prospects: “We’ll be running more, squeezing more, and I’ll be praying more,” he said.2

Finally the strike ended on April 13, with games scheduled to start on Saturday, April 15. Both sides lost money in the short term, the players from lost pay and the owners from lost revenue, and the league lost a number of games from the schedule, something that would come back to haunt some teams by the end of the season. For the Rangers, their new first game was now scheduled to be played in Los Angeles instead of at home. On Friday morning the Rangers worked out at Arlington Stadium for the first time, then flew to California in the afternoon to be ready for Saturday night’s game. Williams watched that practice and admitted that the team looked as if it needed a couple more weeks’ work.3

The first game was attended by a crowd of 13,916, a surprisingly low figure for Opening Day, but obviously hampered by the strike and the reaction of fans to it. During player introductions there were scattered boos, but mostly cheers for the home team. Fred Haney, former major-league player and manager, and the first general manager of the Angels, threw out the first pitch.

The Rangers went with Dick Bosman, starting his third consecutive Opening Day for the franchise, while the Angels countered with Andy Messersmith, a 20-game winner the year before. The two pitchers lived up to their billing, putting zeroes on the scoreboard all day, proving Williams’s suggestion that because of the strike the pitchers would be ahead of the hitters at the start of the season. Bosman pitched well for the visitors, as in the first eight innings he let just one runner reach third and one other get to second. Through eight innings he allowed five hits and had six strikeouts, two each in the first, second, and fifth innings.

Messersmith was better. He kept the Rangers hitless through six innings; Hal King led off the seventh with a single to break up the no-hitter, and Toby Harrah’s single in the eighth was the only other hit the Rangers got. Messersmith finished with nine strikeouts – all by the sixth inning – and five walks. The walks were the closest the Rangers came to his undoing, when in the fifth Messersmith got two strikeouts but then walked Joe Lovitto (making his major-league debut) and Harrah. With two on, Bosman struck out to end the threat.

In the bottom of the ninth, with the game still scoreless, Bosman tired, walking leadoff batter Sandy Alomar. Mickey Rivers bunted, catcher Hal King fumbled the ball, and both runners were safe. Another walk, to Leo Cardenas, and Bosman was done. Williams went to the bullpen, bringing in lefty Paul Lindblad to face left-handed batter Jim Spencer. Spencer fouled off the first pitch, then Lindblad bounced the next pitch in front of the plate. It skipped past King to the backstop, allowing Alomar to run home and score on a walk-off wild pitch.

“Boy, for an opener that was all right. … I wasn’t sure how sharp I’d be. Everything just fell into place,” Messersmith said.4 “I was thinking about a no-hitter from the fourth inning on. I had such good stuff and I felt so good I thought I might make it.”5 Catcher Jeff Torborg said, “He was actually throwing harder in the ninth inning than he was earlier. He had everything.”6

For the Rangers it was an embarrassing way to lose their first-ever game. The game would be symbolic of their entire season: They couldn’t hit, and although they had decent pitching they would be undone by mistakes. Opening Day was just the start of a long and difficult road.

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Notes

1 Dick Miller, “Ex-Steel Union Boss McDonald an Angels Fan,” The Sporting News, April 29, 1972: 21.

2 Don Merry, “Only 13,916 See Andy Tame Texas on 2-Hitter,” Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, April 16, 1972.

3 Merle Heryford, “Out of Cocoon Into the Limelight,” Dallas Morning News, April 15, 1972.

4 Merry.

5 Joe Hendrickson, “Messersmith Flips 1-0 Gem,” Pasadena Star News, April 16, 1972.

6 Merry.

After 11 mainly disappointing seasons in the nation’s capital, the Washington Senators relocated to Arlington, Texas, a city between Dallas and Fort Worth, and were rechristened the Rangers for the start of the 1972 baseball season. Led by Ted Williams since 1969, the Senators had finished with a dismal 63-96 record (fifth place in the AL West) in 1971; however, Texas seemed to have the talent to notch a winning season, something they had done just once as the Senators. “We were excited to start the season,” Broberg told the author. “We had some young players like me on the club, Toby Harrah, Lenny Randle, Jeff Burroughs, and some older guys and veterans, Frank Howard, Dick Billings, and Dick Bosman. We had a good mix.”1

Notwithstanding the players’ excitement, the 1972 season was delayed by 13 days when the players union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, called the first strike in baseball history, resulting in 86 canceled games. “We expected to do well,” recalled Broberg about the start of the season despite the layoff. “We had some success against the Angels the year before (8 wins, 4 losses), and we knew we could hit them. Dick Bosman pitched a great game in the season opener and lost.”2 In that game, Angels right-hander Andy Messersmith, who would play a central role in another showdown between the players’ union and baseball owners three years later, outdueled Bosman, blanking the Rangers, 1-0, on two hits. “Both Andy and Broberg are overpowering pitchers,” said Angels pitching coach Tom Morgan in anticipation of a tough afternoon against the Rangers. “That type will have less trouble coming back from the long layoff.”3

“I felt right at home on the club,” Broberg recalled. “I was more mature, was with the club for about four months in ’71, and had just had my first spring training with them.”4 Originally chosen second overall by the Oakland A’s in the 1968 draft, Broberg rejected a reported $150,000 bonus and instead enrolled at Dartmouth College, where he earned All-American honors. On June 8, 1971, Washington chose him with the second pick of the secondary draft. The 21-year-old Broberg made his big-league debut 12 days later, tossing three-hit ball and yielding two runs in a 6⅓-inning no-decision against Boston. “He can be as good as anybody pitching today,” said Williams of Broberg, who concluded his rookie campaign with a 5-9 record and a 3.47 ERA in 124⅔ innings. “He has tremendous ability and intelligence.”5

Toeing the rubber for first-year skipper Del Rice’s Angels was 31-year-old southpaw Clyde Wright. An All-Star in 1970 when he finished with a 22-12 record, Wright had fashioned a 58-55 record in parts of seven big-league seasons.

A sparse crowd of 6,556 turned up at the Big A, as Anaheim Stadium was known, for a Sunday afternoon of baseball. Attendance had been down all over baseball on the belated opening weekend as thousands of fans mounted their own informal strike. Only 13,916 attended the Angels’ season opener the night before.

“No more two-hitters against us,” said skipper Williams before the game. “We’re gonna get some blankety-blank hits.”6 The Rangers might have taken the Splendid Splinter’s words to heart as the first five batters reached base. Randle led off with a walk, moved to third on Dave Nelson’s single, and scored the first run in Rangers history when, 6-foot-7, 275-pound “Hondo” Howard lined a single to right field. Texas was counting on a productive season from Howard, who Williams claimed hit “left-handers as well as – probably better than – anyone in the league.”7 After smashing a big-league-most 136 home runs from 1968 through 1970 and leading the AL in round-trippers in ’68 and ’70, Howard belted 26 in 1971. Billings followed with a single to drive in Nelson. After Tom Grieve bunted to third base to load the bases, rookie Joe Lovitto hit a grounder to shortstop Leo Cardenas, who opted for a 6-4-3 double play instead of risking a throw home to nab Howard, who was running on contact and scored. Lovitto was not credited with an RBI. Wright fanned Elliott Maddox to end the frame.

The Angels came out swinging against Broberg. Leadoff hitter Sandy Alomar lined a single to center and moved to second on a wild pitch. While the rugged, 6-foot-3, 205-pound right-hander retired the next three hitters, Alomar scored what proved to be the Angels’ only run on Cardenas’s one-out grounder to Harrah.

Wright regained his composure to retire all six batters he faced in the second and third innings. The Angels managed to get a runner to second base with two outs in both innings, yet came up empty-handed both times.

With two outs in the fourth, Maddox got the game’s only extra-base hit, a double to right field. He moved to third on Wright’s wild pitch with Harrah at the plate, and scored the Rangers’ fourth run on a passed ball charged to catcher Jeff Torborg.

After yielding a leadoff hit to Ken McMullen in the fourth, Broberg went on a roll. Described as “dazzling” and “baffling” by sportswriter Leo Noonan of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Broberg did not yield another hit in the fourth through eighth innings.8 He did issue three walks, but also started a double play in the fifth when he made a fine fielding play on Mickey Rivers’ bouncer to the mound, and threw to Harrah to erase the speedy Alomar at second. Harrah then rifled to Howard for the inning-ending twin killing.

The Rangers maintained a 4-1 lead until the ninth inning. Two innings earlier they had had runners on second and third with two outs against Tom Murphy in his second inning of relief. But the former starter, who had lost his spot in the rotation with the acquisition of fireballer Nolan Ryan from the New York Mets in a blockbuster trade in the offseason, induced Howard to ground out. Larry Biittner led off the ninth with a shot to shortstop Cardenas, who misplayed it for his second error of the game. After Broberg’s one-out sacrifice bunt moved Biittner into scoring position, Randle followed with an infield single off reliever Lloyd Allen, in his second inning of work, to drive in Biittner and increase the Rangers’ lead to 5-1.

Broberg’s afternoon ended when McMullen led off the ninth with a single. Rubber-armed southpaw Paul Lindblad, who would lead the AL with 66 appearances in ’72, retired left-handed hitter Vada Pinson, still a dangerous batter in his 15th big-league season. Right-hander Horacio Pina, whom beat writer Merle Heryford of the Dallas Morning News affectionately called “the Latin pretzel” because of his tall and lanky appearance, retired the last two batters to preserve Broberg’s victory and earn his first of what would be a team-high 15 saves.9

“I thought Broberg pitched a good game, a strong game, especially since he hadn’t worked in two weeks and hadn’t gone more than five innings this spring,” said Williams.10  Broberg yielded five hits, walked four, and struck out three in eight impressive innings. Said Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times after the game, “the pitchers are clearly ahead of the batters.”11  Angels beat reporter Leo Noonan equated Broberg’s stuff with his staff’s 20-game winner from the previous season, opining, “Broberg pitched the same kind of game Messersmith did on opening night.”12

In the days before pitchers were monitored so closely, Broberg told the author, he never thought much about pitch counts and could not remember how many pitches he threw that day. The Los Angeles Times reported that Broberg was wound up and visually excited on the mound. “I had a lot of nervous energy I couldn’t burn off,” Broberg told the paper.13

After losing their next two games, in Chicago facing the White Sox at Comiskey Park, the Rangers finally had their home opener on Friday April 21, against the Angels. Bosman pitched just well enough (nine hits, four runs, three earned, in 5⅓ innings) to pick up the win, 7-6. The following afternoon, in front of just 5,517 spectators in Arlington Stadium, Broberg tossed the first shutout in Rangers history, blanking the Angels on four hits.

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Notes

1 Author’s interview with Pete Broberg on June 29, 2015.

2 Ibid.

3 Leo Noonan, “Gates Creaking at Anaheim Stadium,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, April 17, 1972: D2.

4 Author’s interview with Pete Broberg on June 29, 2015.

5 Ross Newhan, “Broberg Too Slick for Angels, 5-1,” Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1972: Part 3, 1.

6 Merle Heryford, “Rangers, Broberg Jail Angels, 5-1. Texas Wins No. 1 With Quick Start,” Dallas Morning News, April 17, 1972: B1.

7 Ibid.

8 Noonan.

9 Heryford.

10 Ibid.

11 Newhan.

12 Noonan.

13 Newhan.

“The game climaxed 20 years of effort for Arlington Mayor Tom Vandergriff and other local leaders who tried to bring major league baseball to the area.”1 One writer recalled that “It was Sept. 21 when Vandergriff stood before AL President Joe Cronin and the club owners and confidently told them a 35,000 seat park would be ready for this team in April. Sincere as the Arlington mayor was, he must have felt like Elmer Blurt, the character on the old Fibber McGee and Molly radio show, who would say something and add, ‘I hope-I hope-I hope-I hope.’”2

The Houston Astros owner, Judge Roy Hofheinz, had earlier cast a costly negative vote so Vandergriff told the crowd on opening night, “Let’s make our cheers heard all the way to Houston tonight.”3 The first ball that Vandergriff pitched to home plate to start the historic game is now in the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

Rangers players’ names like Lovitto, Biittner, Randle, Grieve, Harrah, Maddox, Nelson, and Billings were new and virtually meaningless to most of the fans in “neat, tidy modern Arlington Stadium” (formerly Turnpike Stadium).4 But what mattered was the game itself and the reality of major-league baseball in the Fort Worth-Dallas Metroplex. No longer did baseball fans have to rely on radio play-by-play broadcasts of games for their only touch to major-league action — on-the-scene reports by great announcers like Harry Caray, Vin Scully, Red Barber, Ernie Harwell, Mel Allen, and Jack Brickhouse. Suddenly it seemed as though colorful action photos from Sports Illustrated were magically bursting forth from its pages as second basemen leaped high to turn double plays and batters were swinging for the fences for real.

Newspaper wire reports would no longer be the only reading accounts of yesterday’s games at the breakfast table. The Texas Rangers and their fans were now part of the daily drama called major-league baseball. And soon teams with even more impact would be on their way to Arlington Stadium — historic teams like the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Tigers, the Orioles, and the Indians would be taking the field. And visions of exhibition old-timer games with Hall of Famers like DiMaggio, Mays, Feller, Musial, and Mantle, along with World Series and All-Star games, were already flashing magically on screens in the corners of many fans’ minds. Truly, on this day any hits, runs, and errors by the Texas Rangers and the visiting California Angels were far less meaningful than the historic significance of the grand game of baseball itself.

American League President Joe Cronin was in attendance and observed, “This is the best-lit park in the major leagues. … It is remarkable that they put together such a complete product in so short a time. I was here several weeks ago and it didn’t look anything like this,” to which California manager Del Rice added, “It’s a lot like Fenway Park in Boston.”5 Shortstop Toby Harrah said, “This park is beautiful. … I was expecting a Double-A park but this is one of the best in the league. … It’s nice to play behind a crowd like this.”6

The team had played its first four games on the road and returned to Arlington with a record of 1-3, while the Angels came in at 2-2.

As it turned out, the most exciting moment for the Rangers came in the first at-bat by the Rangers’ Frank Howard, who sent a high slider from left-hander Clyde Wright beyond the farthest point in the park, landing an estimated 480 feet from home plate. Most of the 20,105 fans in attendance gave Howard a standing ovation, and the Rangers went on to take the game, 7-6. Third-base coach Wayne “Twig” Terwilliger said the Howard home run is what he remembered most vividly about that first game.7

The Angels tied it up in the top of the second, on a Rangers error and a couple of singles off the Texas starter, right-hander Dick Bosman. The Rangers added two more in the bottom of the third, two in the fourth, and single runs in the fifth and sixth.

Bosman weakened in the top of the sixth, charged with three runs. Casey Cox relieved. The Angels got two more off Cox in the eighth. Paul Lindblad pitched to the final batter in the ninth, striking him out and earning a save.

Another Ranger contributing to the win was Lenny Randle, who went 3-for-4 and drove in four runs. In addition to Howard’s homer, Dave Nelson hit one out of the park in the fifth inning. Toby Harrah batted in three runs with three hits, and committed one error in five chances. Winning his first game of the year was Dick Bosman, whose pregnant wife left the game early to give birth to a baby girl. Leading the Angels were first baseman Jim Spencer, catcher Art Kusnyer, and left fielder Vada Pinson with three hits apiece; the duo of Mickey Rivers and Sandy Alomar added two more. Wright was the losing pitcher, his second loss of the season.

The 1972 baseball players strike, which caused a loss of eight games and postponement of the opening game, did not dampen the enthusiasm of Rangers fans. Owner Bob Short commented, “It was a great beginning,”8 and added, “I think we’ve found a home.”9 Frank Howard said he was happy with his home run, but “Let’s hope that the win is the memory the fans take home and not just what I or anyone did.”10

From the perspective of Ted Williams’ close friend, “Twig” Terwilliger, a veteran major-league player, coach, and manager over a period of some 60 years, probably the best thing about Ted Williams, the manager, in Texas and during his career, was “his passion for the game, his competitiveness, his incredibly detailed way of analyzing the hitting game, his larger-than-life personality, his way of taking over a room just by walking into it, and his sense of humor — more than once I saw him laugh so hard tears just streamed down his face.” Terwilliger also related what a special honor it was for him to coach for Williams, who unexpectedly gave him the responsibility not only to coach at third base but also for deciding whether batters should bunt. When Williams first called him about coaching, Twig said he experienced pretty much the same thrill as avid baseball fans felt at that first game in seeing Ted Williams in person.11

At the conclusion of that home opener, following Frank Howard’s lead, Williams preferred to focus comments on the victory and Lenny Randle’s performance. He never did wear the cowboy hat or the cowboy boots with gold baseball cleats presented to him in pregame ceremonies. Rangers fans in attendance at that first home game, however, couldn’t have cared less, for they were still filled with the stirring historic baseball magic of that night, and no doubt most of those fans still living will forever keep that in their personal “hall of fame” memory. This writer was one of those first-nighter fans. As Twig wrote in his book and no doubt would say now, “Nuf said.”

Photo credit

Frank Howard with the Texas Rangers in 1972, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 “Cowboy Hats, Rangers, Empty Seats Mark Debut,” Stars and Stripes, April 23, 1972: 23.

2 Sam Blair, “A Smile a Minute,” Dallas Morning News, April 21, 1972: B1.

3 “Cowboy Hats, Rangers.”

4 “Opening Act Went Well for Rangers,” Kittanning (Pennsylvania) Leader Times, April 22, 1972: 10.

5 “Rangers Win Texas Debut,” Benton Harbor (Michigan) News Palladium, April 22, 1972: 14.

6 “Ball Park, Fans Draw Praise From Rangers After Opening Night Win,” Arlington (Texas) Daily News, April 23, 1972: 9.

7 Author interview with Wayne Terwilliger, December 11, 2015.

8 “Opening Act Went Well for Rangers.”

9 “Rangers Win Texas Debut.”

10 “Ball Park, Fans Draw Praise.”

11 Wayne Terwilliger with Nancy Peterson and Peter Boehn, Terwilliger Bunts One (Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot, 2006), 163-164.

The Rangers had no reason to be optimistic about their chances against the powerhouse Orioles, who had won over 100 games each season from 1969 to 1971 and had claimed the AL championship each year as well, as well as a World Series victory in 1970. The Rangers, on the other hand, had lost over 90 games in each of the past two seasons, when they were still the second incarnation of the Washington Senators, and would end up losing 100 games in 1972.

In addition to the obvious disparities between the two franchises, the Rangers were up against noted Senators-slayer Dave McNally, a 20-game winner in each of the previous four seasons. McNally had a career 23-4 record against the Senators/Rangers; since 1968, he was 17-1 against the franchise and had beaten them 13 times in a row.1

Rangers manager Ted Williams sent right-hander Pete Broberg to the mound in the hope that he could play the role of David against McNally’s Goliath. Broberg, an Ivy Leaguer from Dartmouth College, had been the Senators’ first-round draft pick in June 1971 and had posted a 5-9 record with a respectable 3.47 ERA over 18 starts in his rookie season.

Broberg was projected for future stardom and appeared on the cusp of fulfilling his potential as he entered the game with a 1.86 ERA. After he suffered a tough loss to the Cleveland Indians on May 3, the result of two unearned runs, Rangers pitching coach Sid Hudson said, “There’s a great deal of difference in Pete this season compared to last year. More confidence, more maturity. … The only thing he’s lacking now is being able to put that ball where he wants it every time. …”2 Hudson had no idea that his words would be prophetic; Broberg would suffer a worse fate against the Orioles on this evening due both to a sudden inability to find the strike zone and a freak error in the bottom of the ninth inning.

The Rangers’ best chance to score came in the top of the first as Dave Nelson and Frank Howard hit back-to-back one-out singles, but they were stranded when McNally got Ted Ford to fly out and retired Tom Grieve on a grounder to third. After that, the Rangers demonstrated an innate ineptitude on the basepaths the few remaining times they actually had a baserunner.

In the top of the fourth, Lenny Randle reached base on a two-out single but was picked off by McNally. Two innings later, Ford demonstrated the Rangers’ lack of learning that so frustrated their manager, Williams, when he suffered the same fate as Randle, hitting a two-out single and being picked off by McNally.

After Grieve led off the seventh inning with a single, he at least was gunned down at second base by Orioles catcher Andy Etchebarren rather than being picked off at first. In any case, Grieve’s lack of base-stealing success quickly quenched any hope of a Rangers rally.

Perhaps lost amid the Rangers’ misadventures on the bases was the fact that Broberg was matching McNally zero-for-zero through the game. Entering the ninth inning, the Orioles had managed only a single by Etchebarren in the third and a walk to Don Buford in the sixth. In fact, since the Rangers’ half of the first inning, neither team had managed to get a man as far as second base.

Unfortunately, the wheels quickly fell off the Broberg Express in the bottom of the ninth. After Buford hit a one-out single, Broberg lost his composure and walked Merv Rettenmund and Boog Powell to load the bases. (Powell was walked on four pitches.) Brooks Robinson stepped to the plate, and it seemed a certainty that he would knock in the winning run one way or another. With the count at 3-and-1, Robinson appeared discontent with the idea of drawing a walk for the victory and took a hack at a Broberg fastball. The result was a tailor-made double-play ball to Nelson at third base.

Nelson threw to home for the easy force out on Buford, but then bad luck stepped in to thwart the Rangers’ chance to end the inning and extend the game. Catcher Ken Suarez, who was making his first start of the season, threw to first, where he would have had an easy force out except for the fact that he stepped on Robinson’s bat just as he threw the ball. Suarez’s throw hit Robinson on his left side and caromed into right field.

Randle chased after the ball from his second-base position as Rettenmund raced home with the winning run. Though Randle made a throw home, the play was not even close and the Orioles escaped with a 1-0 victory. It was one of 13 walk-off losses this inaugural Rangers squad would suffer in 1972 compared to only three such victories.

In addition to the on-field shenanigans that had cost the Rangers a chance at a win, there was additional drama in the stands that added insult to injury. This series was the first for the team in the Baltimore-Washington area since the Rangers had departed for Texas after the 1971 season, and a number of angry Senators fans had made the 30-mile trip from Washington just to express their opinion of Rangers owner Bob Short, who was at the game.

In the sixth inning, a disgruntled female Senators fan poured a cup of beer over Short’s head as he viewed the game in a box seat behind the Rangers’ dugout. Jerrold C. Hoffberger, the Orioles’ chairman, had been sitting with Short, and he pursued the woman. Eventually, Hoffberger and security officers “grabbed the woman at the top of the stairs and she was hauled away.”3

After the ignominies on the field and in the stands were over, Broberg demonstrated the maturity Hudson had credited to him as he handled the tough defeat by simply stating, “When you’re snakebit, you’re snakebit.”4 He tried to deflect some of the blame from Suarez, urging the reporters, “And say something good about Suarez. Man, he caught a hell of a game for me. I’ve never handled Baltimore like that before. Suarez brought out the best in me.”5

In spite of his “best,” it was Broberg’s second consecutive loss on unearned runs, and his inability to throw strikes at the right time had contributed greatly to the late-game fiasco. Los Angeles Dodgers pitching great Don Drysdale, a Rangers radio announcer in 1972, said a few days later, “And that’s very important. Being able to put a pitch exactly where you want it is what separates the average and the great pitchers.”6

As destiny would have it, Broberg was unable to control his pitches and never achieved major-league greatness. He finished the 1972 season with a 5-12 record and a 4.29 ERA. After posting an 0-4 record with an 8.07 ERA in an injury-riddled 1974 season, he was traded to Milwaukee; there he went 14-16 in 1975, a season in which he walked more batters (106) than he struck out (100). Following stints with the Chicago Cubs and Oakland A’s, the 28-year-old Broberg’s career was over after the 1978 season.

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL197205100.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1972/B05100BAL1972.htm

Notes

1 Deane McGowen, “Roundup: Broberg Loses Two-Hitter on Error, 1-0,” New York Times, May 11, 1972.

2 Randy Galloway, “For Rangers’ Broberg Stardom in the Future?” Dallas Morning News, May 6, 1972.

3 “Fans Give Short Beer Baptismal,” Dallas Morning News, May 11, 1972.

4 Randy Galloway, “Orioles Back Into 1 to 0 Win,” Dallas Morning News, May 11, 1972.

5 Ibid.

6 Randy Galloway, “Broberg Makes Own Orbit,” Dallas Morning News, May 16, 1972.

The cliché “the first one is the hardest one” certainly held true for the first victory in the Rangers’ win streak as manager Ted Williams used 20 players — one fewer than his counterpart Bob Lemon employed — during the 4-hour 56-minute marathon. The Rangers continually squelched Royals rally attempts, so that those Kansas City fans from the crowd of 7,114 who remained to the end went home disappointed.

The Royals’ Jim Rooker had pitched a 5-0 shutout against the Rangers on May 16, but this time the Texas offense started with a bang against Kansas City’s starter, Dick Drago. Dave Nelson smashed a one-out triple and was followed by Don Mincher, who was mired in a zero-for-28 slump. Mincher seemed to be cursed, and not only at the plate. On the previous day, three of his front teeth, “all permanent caps, just fell out for no apparent reason, leaving the first baseman with a gaping smile — if he had any reason to smile.”2

Fortunately, Mincher gave himself a reason to flash his now gap-toothed grin as he lined a double to the left-center-field wall that drove in Nelson for the game’s first run. Hal King followed with a double of his own and later scored on Lovitto’s two-out single to give the Rangers a quick 3-0 lead.

The fact that Lovitto also began the game with a hit was an encouraging sign for the 21-year-old center fielder and his team after he had missed time with a back injury and then had been held out of the lineup in favor of Elliott Maddox until the preceding game against the Royals. Williams, whose own storied hitting career was known to all, said of Lovitto, “We think he has a great future in this game. … But the question is whether he’s ready to hit now or not.”3 On this night, Lovitto, who started in right field, acquitted himself admirably.

Kansas City began to chip away at the lead in the bottom of the second when Cookie Rojas led off with a single against Rangers starter Dick Bosman. Ed Kirkpatrick followed with an RBI double that plated Rojas and reduced the Royals’ deficit to 3-1. They recouped another run in the bottom of the fourth when Lou Piniella led off with a double and Rojas, the next batter, knocked him in with his second base hit of the game.

Drago, after his rough first inning, had settled down and kept the Rangers from adding to their lead during the remainder of his seven-inning stint on the mound, which included retiring the side in order in the fourth through sixth innings. When Bosman walked John Mayberry to start the bottom of the seventh, the Royals capitalized on the opportunity as Gail Hopkins, pinch-hitting for Drago, doubled to drive in the tying run against reliever Mike Paul, who had just entered the game. With the game now tied, neither team would score for the next 10 innings.

The Royals’ lack of runs from this point on was not due to a lack of scoring opportunities. In the bottom of the ninth, Mayberry and Paul Schaal greeted Paul Lindblad, the fourth Texas pitcher of the game (who had recorded the last out of the eighth), with back-to-back singles. Pinch-hitter Ron Hansen was intentionally walked to load the bases, a gamble that worked out for the Rangers in this instance. Freddie Patek flied out as did Amos Otis. Mayberry tried to score on Otis’s out. Maddox made an offline throw from center field, but catcher Rich Billings grabbed the ball on one bounce and applied the tag to Mayberry to send the game into extra innings.

In the bottom of the 10th, Lindblad again found himself in a jam after surrendering a one-out single to Piniella and a double to Rojas. Dennis Paepke was intentionally walked to load the bases once more for Kansas City. Williams’s managerial strategy paid off as planned when Mayberry hit a grounder to Lenny Randle at second base. Randle fired the ball home to get the force out on Piniella, and Billings doubled up a lollygagging Mayberry, who “didn’t run out the play,” at first base.4

The bottom of the 11th was not quite “déjà vu all over again” (as Yogi Berra may or may not have said), but there were enough similarities to the prior two innings that Williams may have felt trapped in a time warp. With Lindblad still pitching for Texas, Roger Nelson hit a one-out single and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt by Patek. Otis then became the third Royals batter to receive an intentional walk in the past three innings as Williams returned to what was becoming a tried-and-true tactic. Richie Scheinblum, a former Rangers farmhand, looked to thwart the Rangers skipper’s strategy when he singled to center field, but Maddox fielded the ball and rifled a perfect throw to Billings to cut Nelson down at home plate for the third out.

If good things come in threes, that was not the case for the Royals in this game. That was three intentional walks in three consecutive innings that resulted in three runners being out at home. The three runs on which the Royals remained stuck would turn out to be insufficient for victory.

In the meantime, the Rangers’ offense had gone into an even greater slumber than it had in the previous night’s shutout. After their three-run barrage in the first, the Rangers went 16 innings without a run, a time during which they managed only five hits (they had accumulated four, including three extra-base hits, in the top of the first!). It was fitting, therefore, that the Rangers would win the game in the 18th inning without managing a hit of any kind.

Ted Abernathy, the fourth Royals reliever, who had entered the game in the top of the 17th inning, got Larry Biittner to fly out for the first out of the 18th. Lovitto reached first on catcher’s interference by Paepke. Rangers reliever Jim Panther, who had pitched the 17th, batted for himself and reached safely when Abernathy threw his bunted ball away as he tried to get the force at first; the error allowed Lovitto to advance to third and put Panther on second. Lemon tried Williams’s approach for ending potential rallies when he had Abernathy issue an intentional walk to Jim Driscoll, who had entered the game at second base in the 16th. With the bases now loaded, Lemon brought in Tom Murphy to pitch to Toby Harrah.

Harrah lined a shot that deflected off Murphy’s glove and was fielded by shortstop Patek, who flipped to the second baseman Rojas for the force out. Driscoll’s slide took out Rojas so that he was unable to make a throw to first to complete the double play, and Lovitto crossed home plate with an unearned run that gave the Rangers a 4-3 lead. Maddox flied out to end the Rangers’ “rally,” and Panther set the Royals down in order in the bottom of the inning to preserve a hard-fought victory. Mayberry, who had a night to forget, made the Royals’ final out on a grounder to second.

If there was a hero of the game, it may have been Lovitto, who had two hits, two walks, and an RBI, and scored the game-winning run. Observers believed at the time that “Lovitto epitomizes the Ranger youth movement — an outstanding young talent with a can’t-miss tag, but still there’s the matter of proving himself.”5

One game does not make a career, however, and Lovitto never did prove himself. He managed a lowly .216 batting average in only 763 at-bats over parts of four seasons with Texas, and his playing career ended after the 1975 campaign. On May 17, 1972, he at least had a moment in the spotlight of the Rangers’ longest game of the season.

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources listed below, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA197205170.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1972/B05170KCA1972.htm

Notes

1 Randy Galloway, “Needed: Good Joe,” Dallas Morning News, May 19, 1972.

2 Randy Galloway, “Skin of Don’s Teeth,” Dallas Morning News, May 18, 1972.

3 Galloway, “Needed: Good Joe.”

4 Randy Galloway, “Rangers Go Late to Win, Dallas Morning News, May 18, 1972.

5 Galloway, “Needed: Good Joe.”

Broberg scattered eight hits and surrendered five walks to make things more interesting at times than his manager, Ted Williams, likely wanted them to be. The top of the first inning was one such occasion as Broberg managed to work around two walks and a single to escape the inning unscathed, thanks largely to catcher Rich Billings’ throwing out Jack Brohamer on an attempted steal of second base.

In the bottom of the first, the Rangers’ futility with their bats finally came to an end against Cleveland’s starter Mike Kilkenny. Ted Kubiak hit a one-out single, and Ted Ford drew a walk to put runners at first and second. Ford was picked off at first by catcher Ray Fosse as Billings was batting, but Billings drew the Rangers’ second walk of the inning, which Frank Howard and Joe Lovitto followed with back-to-back RBI singles that gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead before Elliott Maddox struck out to end the inning.

Both pitchers avoided trouble over the next two innings, but Broberg’s propensity for surrendering walks contributed to the Indians tying the game in the fourth. Fosse was the recipient of a one-out free pass, and he advanced to second on a two-out single by Frank Duffy. Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte sent Lou Camilli, a switch-hitter, to pinch-hit for Kilkenny since he could bat left-handed against the right-hander Broberg.

Left fielder Maddox played the third-base line to try to prevent “the wrong-field extra-base hit,” but he also played “extremely shallow, no more than 100 feet behind third base.”1 Thus, Maddox was helpless when Camilli lofted a double, which should have been “a routine fly ball,”2 to straightaway left field that rolled to the wall and knocked in both Fosse and Duffy to knot the score at 2-2. Broberg retired Del Unser on a fly ball to end the inning, but the damage had been done courtesy of the walk to Fosse and Maddox’s poor positioning in the outfield.

Reliever Ray Lamb took the mound for Cleveland in the bottom of the fourth and pitched seven outstanding innings against Texas. Lamb retired the Rangers in order four times, allowed harmless two-out singles in both the 7th and 10th innings, and worked around two Texas singles in the ninth.

Broberg kept the Indians from taking the lead, and received some fine fielding support in the top of the eighth that kept the game deadlocked. Tommy McCraw had hit a one-out double and was still on second – now with two outs – when Buddy Bell hit a grounder to the hole at shortstop. Kubiak, filling in at shortstop for All-Star selectee Toby Harrah, who had injured a shoulder two nights earlier, made a diving stop of the ball that held Bell to a single and forced McCraw to hold up at third base.3 Billings then threw out Duffy, who was attempting to bunt his way on, to end Cleveland’s scoring threat.

Broberg was replaced by Paul Lindblad in the ninth inning after surrendering a one-out single to Unser. Lindblad allowed the Indians’ second hit of the frame to Brohamer before striking out both Chris Chambliss and Graig Nettles to quash any thoughts Cleveland might have had of a late-game rally. In the Rangers’ half of the inning, Billings led off with a single and advanced to second on Maddox’s two-out base hit, but that was the farthest any runner advanced against Lamb, and Randle struck out to send the game to extra innings.

The relief pitchers’ duel continued with Lindblad and Lamb pitching the 10th inning for their respective teams. Horacio Pina took over the mound duties for Texas in the top of the 11th, and Ed Farmer did the same for the Indians in the bottom of the frame; both hurlers did well in their first inning of work, but then created excitement in the 12th inning.

Pina walked Brohamer to open the 12th, but Brohamer was forced at second base on a Chambliss grounder. Nettles then singled, and Pina issued his second walk of the inning, to McCraw, to load the bases. With the Indians on the cusp of taking the lead, Rangers infielders demonstrated some deft glove work. First, Fosse hit a grounder to Kubiak and the shortstop fired home to get the force on Chambliss. Next, Bell shot a grounder up the middle that looked as though it would be a base hit, but “Randle backhanded the ball, then flipped to Kubiak at second to just nip Fosse for the third out.”4

As is often the case when a player has made an outstanding play in the field, the momentum carries over to the plate. Such was the situation for Randle in the bottom of the 12th as he hit a one-out single and advanced to second when Pina, looking to help his own cause, laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt. Nelson stepped to the plate and watched as Farmer uncorked a wild pitch that enabled Randle to advance to third. With the winning run only 90 feet away and a 3-and-0 count at the plate, Nelson swung away and lashed a single to center field that knocked in the final run of what was now a 3-2 Rangers victory.

To anyone who was surprised that Nelson, who had been hitless in five previous at-bats in the game, swung on 3-and-0, he explained, “No way I’m going on my own in that situation. … I’m definitely checking with the dugout.”5 After Williams gave the sign to swing away, Nelson got the pitch he was looking for and ended the game on a positive note for himself and his team.

For both Nelson and Randle, their roles in the 12-inning victory were a sweet reversal from two nights earlier when they had made errors on back-to-back batted balls that had resulted in two unearned runs to give the Indians the win in a 14-inning contest. The two players exemplified the 1972 Texas Rangers, whose roster was filled with athletes who had the potential to be future stars; unfortunately for the Rangers and their fans, most of the players’ potential would remain unfulfilled.

In the case of Nelson, no less an observer than Williams, the “Splendid Splinter” himself, had appraised him as a potential .280 or .290 hitter and had raved, “If he hits that and makes 75 attempted steals, he can get 50 stolen bases. … That guy can be a helluva asset and player in this league.”6 Nelson’s best season would be 1973 when he batted .286 and stole 43 bases, coming close to Williams’s projections, but he was traded to the Kansas City Royals for pitcher Nelson Briles after the 1975 season and was out of the major leagues after the 1977 campaign.

Randle, who had scored the winning run, had also started to earn accolades. Though Williams had commented, “He’s got that little flip throw to second trying to start a double play that I wish he’d forget,”7 Randle’s fielding acumen had been in evidence on this night. As for Randle’s batting, he had begun switch-hitting in 1972 and Williams observed, “I think this has helped him at the plate. I’ll tell you, I’m sold on this kid now.”8

As fate would have it, of all the 1972 Rangers who failed to have successful careers, Randle was the only one to go down in infamy. After losing his starting job at second base to Bump Wills during spring training in 1977, he punched manager Frank Lucchesi in the face three times, sending Lucchesi to the hospital. Randle was fined $23,407, suspended for 30 days, and then traded to the New York Mets on April 26, 1977, but he “never could shake the label of a hothead who had once broken his manager’s cheekbone.”9

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources listed below, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TEX/TEX197207160.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1972/B07160TEX1972.htm

Notes

1 Randy Galloway, “Rangers Win in 12th, 3-2,” Dallas Morning News, July 17, 1972.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Bob St. John, “Price You Pay,” Dallas Morning News, May 23, 1972.

7 Merle Heryford, “Switch in Time, Randle Closer on Left Side,” Dallas Morning News, March 14, 1972.

8 Randy Galloway, “He’s So Out, He’s In,” Dallas Morning News, April 25, 1972.

9 Patrick Mondout, “Lenny Randle Slugs Manager After Losing Job (3/28/1977),” baseballchronology.com/Baseball/Years/1977/March/28-Frank-Lucchesi-Lenny-Randle.asp, accessed October 21, 2015.

“I felt tired and sluggish when I got to the ballpark,” admitted Ryan. “I hadn’t done anything for a few days.”3 The hard-throwing 25-year-old, acquired from the New York Mets in the offseason in what proved to be one of the most lopsided trades in major-league history,4 seemed fatigued in his first season as a full-time starter after serving as a swingman and reliever for most of the previous four seasons. In his three last starts, all losses on the road, Ryan had been clobbered for 19 hits and 18 runs in just 18⅓ innings, dropping his record to 11-8 and raising his ERA to 3.14. But pitching at home in Southern California was a different story. In his 11 starts at Anaheim Stadium, the Ryan Express had spun five shutouts, thrown a one-hitter, a three-hitter, and two four-hitters, and had fanned 16 twice. Facing “one of the least distinguished batting orders in baseball,” opined Ron Rapoport of the Los Angeles Times, was just what the doctor ordered to get Ryan back on track.5

A crowd of just 8,715 spectators braved the sweltering heat for an intradivision contest between two sub-.500 teams on Tuesday, July 27, at the ballpark affectionately called the “Big A” because of its gigantic, 230-foot A-frame scoreboard adorned with a halo. Playing their first game since concluding a 12-game road swing on July 23, rookie skipper Del Rice’s Angels were reeling, having lost 10 of their last 14 games to fall to 40-52, fifth place in the AL West. The Rangers, led by the immortal Ted Williams in his fourth and final campaign as skipper, matched California’s record in its last 14 games. The cellar-dwellers were 37-53, 18½ games behind the eventual world champion Oakland A’s.

Ryan started the game by fanning Dave Nelson before running into trouble. He walked the next two batters, Joe Lovitto, who promptly stole second, and Larry Biittner, both of whom moved up on a wild pitch. With “perhaps the liveliest fastball in the majors,” according to Randy Galloway, Ryan fanned Dick Billings and Ted Ford to escape what proved to be his biggest jam of the game.6

California loaded the bases with one out in the first against starter Mike Paul when Leo Cardenas and Andy Kosco singled and Bob Oliver walked. Paul, a 27-year-old southpaw acquired in the offseason from Cleveland, was arguably the Rangers’ best hurler thus far in ’72 with a 3-2 record and 1.94 ERA as a spot starter and reliever. He punched out Ken McMullen before Billy Parker, playing in his first game since being recalled from Triple-A Salt Lake City, singled to right to drive in Cardenas and Kosco.

Ryan, who had walked almost as many batters as hits he surrendered thus far in his career, issued a free pass to Bill Fahey, who was making his first plate appearance of the season since his call-up from Texas’s Triple-A affiliate, the Denver Bears. Undeterred, Ryan fanned the next three hitters.

The Angels added a run in the bottom of the third when left fielder Billings misplayed Cardenas’s fly ball, enabling the five-time All-Star from Cuba to reach second. After Bob Oliver was intentionally walked with one out, California native Ken McMullen derailed Paul’s plan to play for an inning-ending twin killing by driving in Cardenas on a single to left. It was déjà vu all over again as Billings fumbled the fly for his second error of the frame, permitting Oliver to advance to third, where he was stranded.

While Ryan mowed down the Rangers with 11 strikeouts without surrendering a hard-hit ball through five innings, the Angels nicked reliever Bill Gogolewski for another run in the fifth, though it could have been worse. Oliver led off with a walk, moved to third on McMullen’s single, and subsequently scored on Ken Berry’s one-out force-play grounder. With Berry on second via a stolen base and John Stephenson reaching on a hit by pitch, Ryan grounded out.

The Angels held their collective breath in the top of the seventh when Ryan grabbed his elbow after retiring Fahey on a fly to left with Ford on first via a walk. Racing to the mound, manager Rice and trainer Freddie Federico inspected Ryan, who shook his arm and seemed to shrug off the pain. “I can’t say I lost anything due to it,” said Ryan after the game. “It popped like that before, maybe three or four times a year. It bothered me on three or four pitches after that.”7 Ryan fanned the next batter, Jim Mason, and dispatched Vic Harris on a grounder to first.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, Berry’s two-out double down the left-field foul line led to the Angels’ fifth and final run. Gogolewski intentionally walked Stephenson to face Ryan, among the worst-hitting pitchers in baseball history.8The mild-mannered Texan slapped a fastball down the right-field line, driving in Berry, for his second of 10 career doubles.

Following Ryan’s two-out walk to Lovitto in the eighth, Biittner broke up Ryan’s no-hitter on a clean double just out of the reach of right fielder Andy Kosco, who fired a bullet to home plate to keep Lovitto from advancing and thus preserving the shutout. Ryan ended the inning by fielding Billings’ tapper back to the mound and firing to first baseman Oliver.

Ryan’s league-leading sixth shutout of the season was not without another tense moment in the ninth. After punching out leadoff batter Ford and retiring Fahey on a grounder, Ryan yielded a single to Mason. To the plate stepped pinch-hitter Frank Howard, a two-time home run champion and once one of the most feared sluggers in the AL. According to Randy Galloway, Howard sent Ryan’s offering into the gap in deep right-center field. Center fielder Ken Berry made a spectacular “diving catch” to end the game in 2 hours and 37 minutes.9

The Angels scored five runs or more in a game for only the sixth time in their last 35 games by victimizing Rangers pitchers for 11 hits and eking out five walks, but also leaving 12 runners on base in their 5-0 victory. The story of the game, however, was the club’s star pitcher. Overcoming the elbow scare in the seventh inning, Ryan finished with a two-hitter and fanned 14, the seventh time in 23 starts thus far in ’72 that he whiffed at least 10 in a game; he also walked six batters. “I was able to stay away from them with my fastball all night,” Ryan told the Los Angeles Times.10 Dick Miller of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner wrote excitedly that Ryan made the Rangers, whose .217 team batting average in 1972 was the second lowest in the live-ball era, look like “Execution Row.”11

“I feel comfortable here,” said Ryan about pitching in Anaheim Stadium, where the victory improved his record there to 9-2 with a sub-1.00 ERA and six shutouts. “This was a big game after the way I pitched in my last three innings.”12 An All-Star for the first of eight times in 1972 (he did not pitch in the game), Ryan surpassed his career-high innings set the previous year with the Mets, with more than two months of the season remaining. “I never have been a good second-half pitcher,” he told the Times. “And I didn’t want to have another lapse.”13 And he didn’t. Over his last 17 starts of the campaign, Ryan posted a 1.41 ERA in 140⅔ innings and held opponents to a .156 batting average, yet split his 16 decisions. He concluded the season with a 19-16 record and a 2.28 ERA, and led the AL in strikeouts (329), shutouts (9), hits per nine innings (5.3), and strikeouts per nine innings (10.4), but also paced the circuit in walks (157) and wild pitches (18).

“That’s the first time I ever had a shot at a no-hitter,” said Ryan of his victory over the Rangers. “I’ve never gotten that close before.”14 His skipper, Del Rice, a former big-league catcher who played on World Series winners in St. Louis (1946) and Milwaukee (1957), knew it was just a matter of time before the speedballer would achieve the feat. “He’ll get more than one no-hitter when he’s consistent with his control and has his curveball,” Rice said.15 The following spring, on May 15, Ryan held the Kansas City Royals hitless at Royals Stadium to notch his first of a big-league record seven no-hitters.

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CAL/CAL197207270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1972/B07270CAL1972.htm

Notes

1 Randy Galloway, “Ryan Blanks Texas,” Dallas Morning News, July 28, 1972: 4B.

2 Dick Miller, “Aches ’n Pains. Ryan Rockets Back to Top,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, July 28, 1972: C1.

3 Ibid.

4 On December 10, 1971, the Mets shipped Ryan, catcher Frank Estrada, pitcher Don Rose, and right fielder Leroy Stanton to the Angels for aging, six-time All-Star shortstop Jim Fregosi. While Fregosi played in only 146 games in two years, Ryan developed into a Hall of Famer and Stanton served as a dependable outfielder, often in a platoon role, for the next five seasons.

5 Ron Rapoport, “Ryan Loses No-Hitter in 8th, Then Wins, 5-0,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1972: III, 1.

6 Galloway.

7 Rapoport.

8 Leading up to this game, Ryan had batted .137 (27-for-197) and finished with a .110 average on 94 hits in his big-league career.

9 Galloway

10 Rapoport.

11 Miller.

12 Miller. In his last outing, Ryan lasted just 3⅓ innings in the second game of a doubleheader against New York at Yankee Stadium, yielding six hits and seven runs.

13 Rapoport.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

As Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey was sometimes wont to do, the Boston Red Sox announced that all proceeds from the Friday night, August 25 game against the visiting Texas Rangers would go to the Jimmy Fund, to aid in the fight against cancer in children. The Jimmy Fund was a favored cause of Ted Williams, dating back to 1947, and the official charity of the Red Sox since they inherited the mantle after the Boston Braves left town in 1953. There was a hitting contest scheduled before the game with older players such as Dom DiMaggio, Walt Dropo, Ted Lepcio, Frank Malzone, and Johnny Pesky.

Ted Williams was in town as manager of the Texas Rangers. It was far from the first time he’d visited Fenway with another team; he’d managed the Washington Senators in 1969, 1970, and 1971. The Rangers had been to Fenway in mid-June, but this time there was the Jimmy Fund component. And a hitting contest.

Ben Bradlee Jr. writes that Tom Yawkey had paid a visit to Ted before the contest.1 It wasn’t a total surprise that Ted took up a bat; he’d told Clif Keane of the Boston Globe the day before that he’d be taking at least half a dozen swings.2

Williams had been out of the game for a dozen years and was just five days shy of turning 54 years old. The old slugger said, “I may have a heart attack. I haven’t swung all year, so it may be tough.” Keane suspected he might have done a little hitting the day before, when the Rangers were in Milwaukee.

The 6:30 P.M. contest before the regularly scheduled game was to feature some 10 radio personalities and former Red Sox players.

The others all took their cuts, but around 7:15 the crowd started chanting, “We want Ted!”

It made it appear that he hadn’t been scheduled to be in the competition but was drafted by popular acclaim. Williams was described by the Globe‘s Keane as “obese” and by the Boston Herald‘s Fred Ciampa as “portly.” Keane said Ted “dragged his bat, as ever, shaking his head and pointing out to [pitcher] Lee Stange of the Red Sox to ‘bring it.’” 3

Williams didn’t just grab any old bat, apparently. Bill Ziegler handed him one of Tom Grieve‘s bats, a W183 Louisville Slugger, the same model Williams had used as a player. He was wearing number 9, but his jersey bore the name “Williams” on the back; it was a Rangers jersey. The Red Sox, even more than 40 years later, do not wear their names on their uniforms at home.

Texas Rangers catcher-left fielder Dick Billings said, “It was the most electrifying thing I’ve even seen in my life. He hit line drive after line drive. He hit them everywhere. He hit them off the wall. He hit a home run that was just foul [to right field]. Everything was a shot. Guys in the dugout were just looking at each other. Staring. How old was he? You would have thought he was 22. I never have seen a batting practice exhibition like that from anyone of any age.”4

Though Williams struck the ball well, Billings may have been guilty of a bit of hyperbole. The one he said was off the wall was actually off the front wall of the Rangers bullpen, hitting it on one bounce. The Boston Herald did write that he hit one “clearing the right-field fence.”5 The Los Angeles Times wrote that Number 9’s timing was understandably off: “He fouled off several pitches, but also hit some solid shots, including one to the base of the 380-foot sign in right field. Ted also pulled one down the right-field line which appeared foul by inches.”6

So maybe he didn’t actually hit a home run. Everyone felt good. And regarding the ball that went near the Pesky Pole, it was ruled a home run. “[T]he ‘official scorer’ ruled that the drive hit the foul pole, so the Jimmy Fund, Ted’s pet charity, was enriched by another $250 donation from Yawkey for the ‘homer.'”7 Ted Lepcio did hit a homer, into the netting atop the left-field wall. Walt Dropo hit one out, too. (It was noted that Lepcio had been working out at Fenway for two weeks.)

Keane concluded, “Layoffs don’t mean a thing if you still have that swing.” Tom Grieve of the Rangers had a memory paralleling that of Billings. “The players were just stunned.”8

In the game that followed, Luis Tiant threw a four-hitter and the Red Sox won, 4-0. It was his fourth start in a row that resulted in a complete-game win. He’d allowed a total of 16 hits in the four games. His next two starts were shutouts as well.

Ted’s hitting well after a layoff was reminiscent of the show he put on back in 1953 for a nearly empty ballpark and not the 33,551 present in 1972. He’d just come back from serving in the Korean War, including 39 combat missions, forced to crash-land his jet once and barely limping back with a badly damaged plane another time. He hadn’t held a bat, or been on a ballfield, for more than a year. Cambridge Chronicle reporter George Sullivan recalled that Williams took a few swings at Paul Schreiber‘s pitches … and then hit nine balls in a row out of the park. “It was one of the greatest things I ever saw. I always said it was one of the greatest things I ever saw, how many balls he hit out of the ballpark. My nose was up almost to that batting cage. I noticed during the end of it that there was blood streaming down Ted’s hands. Just superficial, from his hands not being calloused from hitting a baseball.”9

Notes

1 Ben Bradlee Jr., The Kid; The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (Boston: Little, Brown, 2013), 562. Bradlee reported the account of Rangers trainer Bill Zeigler.

2 Clif Keane, “Williams Leads Jimmy Hitters,” Boston Globe, August 25, 1972: 53.

3 Clif Keane, “Ted Swings, and Fans Love It,” Boston Globe, August 26, 1972: 21.

4 Leigh Montville, Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 301-302.

5 Fred Ciampa, “Williams Homers for Jimmy Fund,” Boston Herald, August 26, 1972: 2.

6 “There Was No Mistaking Him When Williams Came to Bat,” Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1972: C2.

7 Ibid.

8 Montville, 302.

9 Author interview with George Sullivan, October 3, 2014.

The Rangers were in a freefall, having lost 10 of their last 12 games when they arrived in Anaheim to kick off an 11-game road swing. Fourth-year skipper Ted Williams’s squad was in last place in the AL West (51-84), and would finish last among the 12 AL teams in most offensive categories in ’72, including home runs (56), batting average (.217), and slugging percentage (.581). The club’s pitching staff matched their offensive counterparts by finishing last in team ERA (3.53), complete games (11), shutouts (6), and of course, losses (100) in the strike-shortened season.  The Rangers’ dismal record kept their division opponents, the California Angels, out of the cellar. Led by first-year pilot Del Rice, the Halos (63-72) were in fifth place.

Toeing the rubber for the Angels was Nolan Ryan, whom Merle Heryford of the Dallas Morning News described as “probably the fastest man in the league.”3 The Angels had acquired the 25-year-old speedballer, along with three other players from the New York Mets in exchange for Jim Fregosi in an offseason trade that has been considered among the most lopsided in baseball history. While Ryan posted a pedestrian 29-38 record in limited action in parts of five seasons with the Mets, he transformed into one of the AL’s best pitchers in ’72, entering the game with a 16-13 record and 2.53 ERA. In 33 starts, he had struck out at least 10 batters on 12 occasions, and had thrown a one-hitter, two two-hitters, and three three-hitters.

While Ryan made national headlines with his 100-mph heater, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, native Bill Gogolewski hurled in relative obscurity. Chosen in the 18th round of the 1965 amateur draft, “Gogo,” as his teammates called him, debuted as a September call-up for the Washington Senators in 1970. The following season he was arguably the Senators’ most effective pitcher, winning six of 11 decisions and posting a robust 2.75 ERA in 124⅓ innings as a part-time starter and reliever. But in the Rangers’ first season in Texas, the 6-foot-4, 200-pound hurler had struggled thus far in ’72 (3-9, 4.39 ERA in 121 innings) and had not notched a victory since he tossed a five-hitter against Minnesota on May 19.

Gogolewski recalled that he was looking forward to starting against Ryan. “We pulled into Anaheim Stadium and on the marquee it said ‘Nolan Ryan vs. the Texas Rangers.’ And I thought, ‘the rest of the team isn’t going to show up, or what?’ That was an incentive.” In fact, Gogolewski had been pitching his best ball of the season, surrendering just 15 hits and six earned runs in his last 22 innings, though he came up winless in those three starts.

The Tuesday evening match-up between two sub-.500 teams drew a sparse crowd of 4,292 to Anaheim Stadium, known as the “Big A” for the 230-foot-tall letter A that served as the park’s main scoreboard. The Rangers came out swinging against Ryan. Leadoff hitter Dave Nelson lined a single to right field and reached second when Leroy Stanton juggled the ball for an error. Nelson moved to third on Toby Harrah’s fly ball and scored on Ryan’s wild pitch.

After Gogolewski set the Angels down 1-2-3 in the first, the Rangers took their cuts at Ryan’s fastball. Joe Lovitto sliced a one-out single to center field and moved to second on another wild pitch by Ryan, who led the majors with 18 wild ones in ’72. Bill Fahey, batting a meager .150, hit a bouncer past first base to drive in Lovitto for a 2-0 lead. It looked as though Ryan was on the ropes. Fahey moved to third on a single by rookie Vic Harris (batting .106), who stole second with Gogolewski at the plate. After “Gogo” fanned, Ryan walked Nelson to load the bases, but punched out Harrah to end the threat. “It was amazing how quick [Ryan’s] fastballs got to you,” recalled Gogolewski, who whiffed in each of his three plate appearances against Ryan. “By the time you react, it’s at you. But I wasn’t worried about those strikeouts.”

No batter for either team reached base again until Ryan issued a one-out walk to Nelson in the fifth. Nelson took advantage of Ryan’s high leg kick to swipe the 40th of his career-high 51 steals that season. Then, in a dazzling display of speed, Nelson took off on a hit-and-run with Harrah at the plate.  Harrah hit a grounder to third base that Ken McMullenfielded cleanly and threw to Bob Oliver at first. Not slowing down, Nelson rounded third and slid home just beating Oliver’s throw.

Gogolewski “yawned through the first six innings,” opined Rangers beat reporter Merle Heryford.4 The Angels pounded Gogolewski’s devastating slider into the dirt, making 12 infield groundouts and hitting only five outfield fly outs in the entire game.

Texas threatened in the seventh when Fahey was hit by a pitch on his right elbow and stole second. Still smarting from the blow, Fahey departed for pinch-runner Dalton Jones, and went to the hospital for x-rays. Nelson beat out a two-out infield single, moving Jones to third, and swiped another base to put two men in scoring position. Ryan reared back and fanned Harrah to end the frame.

The Angels’ Sandy Alomar attempted to break up Gogo’s no-hitter by bunting to lead off the seventh. Gogolewski fielded the tapper back to the mound and fired a strike to first baseman Larry Biittner. When umpire George Maloney called Alomar out, Angels skipper Del Rice burst onto the field to protest, but to no avail. Vada Pinson drew a two-out walk to end Gogolewski’s perfect game, but the tall right-hander set down the next batter.

After issuing a walk to McMullen to lead off the eighth, Gogolewski fielded Stanton’s chopper back to the mound to initiate a 1-6-3 double play. Billy Parker, who entered the game batting a paltry .171, stepped to the plate. “Fahey got hurt and Dick Billings came in [from left field to catch in the bottom of the seventh],” explained Gogolewski. “He said to me, ‘I’m not calling your pitches.’ He knew I had a no-hitter going. He had put down a slider for Parker. But I thought, ‘No, they’ll be looking for it because they knew that that was my out pitch.’ ” Parker blasted a clean double over center fielder Lovitto’s head. “It was supposed to be a fastball inside and it was a fastball belt-high outside,” said Gogolewski. “And Parker drove it to right center.”  Parker’s hit, which both the Dallas and Los Angeles papers described as the Angels’ only hard-hit ball of the game, ended Gogolewski’s quest to throw the first no-hitter in franchise history. A good-natured Midwesterner, Gogolewski took a deep breath, and then retired pinch-hitter John Stephenson on a popup to second base.

After Ryan pitched a scoreless ninth, Gogolewski tossed a 1-2-3 frame to complete the game in 2 hours and 11 minutes. In what was described as a “brilliant performance” by Merle Heryford, Gogolewski finished with a one-hitter, issued two walks, and struck out three in what proved to be his second and final shutout in his six-year major league career (1970-1975), during which he went 15-24.5 Gogolewski’s career day, opined sportswriter Don Merry of the Long Beach(California) Independent, “was more surprising than it was overpowering.”6 A tough-luck loser, Ryan yielded six hits and only two earned runs, and struck out 15. Ryan concluded the campaign in a blaze, making five more starts, striking out 54 in 44 innings, while yielding only 21 hits and five earned runs (1.02 ERA) to finish the season with a 19-16 record and a 2.28 ERA. He led the league in shutouts (9), strikeouts (329), and fewest hits per nine innings (5.3).

Gogolewski’s gem was one of the Rangers’ last highlights of the ’72 season. The club lost its next 15 games, and finished with a major-league worst 54-100 record, 38½ games behind the division champion Oakland A’s.

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CAL/CAL197209120.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1972/B09120CAL1972.htm

Notes

1 “Gogolewski One-Hitter Too Much for Ryan, 3-0,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1972: III, 1.

2 Author’s interview with Bill Gogolewski on August 17, 2015. All quotations from Gogolewski are from this interview.

3 Merle Heryford, “Gogo 1-Hitter Defeats Angels,” Dallas Morning News, September 13, 1972: 4B.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Don Merry, “Ryan Fans 15, but Rangers Win, 3-0,” Independent (Long Beach, California), September 13, 1972: 43.

On this Sunday afternoon, before an Arlington Stadium crowd of only 5,121, Chicago’s Wilbur Wood was looking for his 25th win of the season. Facing him was Dick Bosman, who had an ERA of 3.83 but a record of only 7-10. Bosman had not won a game for the Rangers since August. In his last start, on September 25, he had pitched well, allowing only two runs on five hits in eight innings, but Nolan Ryan and the California Angels bested Bosman and the Rangers 2-1.

The game against the White Sox started off well for Bosman. Three up and three down in the top of the first, including a strikeout of leadoff batter Lee Richard. In the Rangers’ first inning, leadoff batter Dave Nelson walked and stole second base. Toby Harrah lifted a fly ball to center for an out, and Nelson motored to third base after the catch. Ted Ford then singled to right field, and the Rangers had a quick 1-0 lead. Dick Billings lined to third baseman Hank Allen, who threw to first to double up Ford for the third out.

Bosman struck out the side (Tony Muser, Jay Johnstone, and Allen) in the second. Wood was equally effective. His defense made two errors in the second, but Wood retired the side with no hits or runs. In the top of the third, Rudy Hernandez singled to center with one out but was stranded there. An inning later, after Bosman struck out Jorge Orta, he allowed back-to-back singles by Pat Kelly and Muser. Then Johnstone flied out and Allen forced Muser at second to end the threat. Those two hits in the fourth were the last given up by Bosman in the game.

The Rangers got a hit by Vic Harris in the fifth inning, but he was forced at second when Bosman grounded to short. Bosman and Wood traded zeroes inning after inning. In the bottom of the sixth, Wood faced the top of the order. Nelson singled to right and again stole second base. Harrah walked. Rangers manager Ted Williams put on the sacrifice, and Ford bunted. Wood fielded the ball and threw to first, where Orta was covering. With one out, Texas had runners at second and third. Billings was intentionally walked to load the bases. Wood prevailed, though, striking out Larry Biittner and getting Tom Ragland to ground into a force out, short to second.

The only other play of note occurred in the top of the seventh inning. Johnstone was called out on strikes and argued the call. Home-plate umpire Bill Kunkel ejected the Chicago left fielder. He was replaced by Walt Williams.

The rest of the game consisted of the pitchers facing three batters each inning and giving up no walks or hits. In the top of the ninth, Orta reached on an error by Texas second baseman Harris, but he was caught stealing on the next play. Kelly struck out and Muser fouled out to third baseman Ragland to end the game, which was completed in 1 hour 58 minutes.

Both pitchers pitched well enough to earn the victory. Each had pitched a complete game and allowed only three hits, all singles. Wood had walked three and Bosman had issued one free pass. Wood got 12 groundball outs in the game, and Bosman struck out at least one White Sox batter in every inning except the sixth, for a total of 13.

The victory for Bosman was his only complete game and shutout of the season. The three hits he gave up were the fewest since he allowed one hit in six innings on June 6. Wood, with a record of 24-17, finished second in the 1972 American League’s Cy Young Award vote. (The winner was Cleveland’s Gaylord Perry.) In this loss, he failed for the seventh straight time in his quest for victory number 25.2 After the game, Chicago manager Chuck Tanner gave Wood the rest of the season off, meaning that he did not play in the White Sox’ final three games.

Nelson and Ford provided the offense for Texas, with a walk, stolen base, and single in the first inning. Two of the key Rangers players (Bosman and Ford) were linked after this season as well. On May 10, 1973, they were traded by the Rangers to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Steve Dunning. The 1973 season was Ford’s last in the major leagues.

In defeating the White Sox, Texas had ended its 15-game losing streak (which would remain the franchise record through 2015). They beat the Kansas City Royals in their next game, on October 3, but they lost their final game of the season to the Royals, 4-0, to give them 100 losses for the season.

In 1972 the Washington Senators had left the nation’s capital to become the Texas Rangers. They brought their manager, Ted Williams, with them. Williams managed the Senators for three years (1969 to 1971), and after this one awful 1972 season in Texas, the Hall of Famer hung up his uniform.

This article was published in “The Team that Couldn’t Hit: The 1972 Texas Rangers” (SABR, 2019), edited by Steve West and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the notes, the author consulted baseball-reference.com, mlb.com, and retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TEX/TEX197210010.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1972/B10010TEX1972.htm

Notes

1 https://baseball-reference.com/bullpen/1972_strike. The players union struck from April 1 to April 13, 1972. The 86 games lost were not made up, so most teams played 154, 155, or 156 games. Both the Rangers and White Sox finished the season with 154 games played.

2 “Sox Lose 1-0, Wood Ends Season,” Chicago Tribune, October 2, 1972.