April 19, 1962: Román Mejías draws Houston’s first ejection; manager Harry Craft also thumbed

Román Mejías spent only one season with the Houston Colt .45s, but he made the most of it. In 1962, the Colts’ first season in the National League, right fielder Mejías – an expansion-draft pickup from the Pittsburgh Pirates1 – led the team in many offensive categories, including hits, home runs, and runs batted in.2 He hit the franchise’s first homer in its first game on April 10, adding a second round-tripper later in the game as the Colts swamped the Chicago Cubs, 11-2.

Mejías left his mark on the Colts/Astros record book in other ways.3 On April 19, 1962, in the franchise’s eighth game, he became the first Colt to be ejected when he protested a call by umpire Ken Burkhart. Houston carried on and beat the Cubs again, 6-0, behind a five-hitter by Dean Stone and a home run by Mejías’s replacement, John Weekly.

The Colts could hardly have asked for better scheduling to begin their debut season. Three of their first four series came against the Cubs and New York Mets, the only teams they beat in the season standings.4

Opening at home, Houston swept three games from the Cubs by a combined score of 15-2. After losing twice to the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium, the Colts had three games postponed by weather in Philadelphia and New York before squeezing in a win against their fellow expansionists, the Mets, on April 17. Houston then traveled to Chicago for two games, losing on April 18. Mejías hit safely in the Colts’ first seven games and entered the April 19 game hitting .433.

The Cubs were in the second season of their “College of Coaches,” a dubious innovation conceived by owner Philip Wrigley in which the manager’s job rotated through the coaching staff.5 Colts manager Harry Craft had been one of 1961’s College of Coaches, going 7-9 in two brief stints at the helm. (He’d previously managed the Kansas City Athletics as well.)

Three different “coaches” managed the Cubs in 1962; El Tappe occupied the hot seat on April 19. Tappe, a Cubs catcher in 1960, took three turns as manager in 1961. After racking up a 4-16 record in April 1962, Tappe was replaced by Lou Klein and became a player-coach.

The Colts gave the start to 31-year-old lefty Stone, who had pitched the franchise’s first complete-game shutout in a 2-0 win over the Cubs on April 12.6 Stone, formerly an All-Star with the Washington Nationals,7 had been absent from the majors for three of the preceding four seasons.8 He spent 1960 and 1961 at Triple A in the St. Louis Cardinals’ system before the Colts chose him in the November 1961 Rule 5 draft.

The Cubs started right-hander Don Cardwell, in his sixth big-league season at age 26. Cardwell led the Cubs with 15 wins in 1961 but was off to a poor start. He gave up five earned runs in 2⅔ innings and lost to Houston on Opening Day, then was knocked out in the third inning of a loss to the Cardinals on April 14. He entered with a 16.20 ERA. Cardwell had been traded to the Cubs by the Phillies in May 1960, and had pitched a no-hitter in his first start for Chicago.

The tone was set early on, as both teams wasted runners in scoring position. For Houston, a hit batsman, a walk, and an infield single loaded the bases with two outs, but Merritt Ranew struck out. (Mejías also fanned in the middle of the rally.) In the Cubs’ half, an error, a single, and a hit batsman loaded the sacks with one out. But future Hall of Famer Ron Santo grounded into a 6-4-3 double play.

The Colts again mounted a station-to-station rally in the second. With one out, Don Buddin walked. Stone tried to sacrifice, but Cardwell deliberated too long about where to throw. He made a soft toss to first, and both runners were safe.9 Bob Aspromonte’s infield single loaded the bases for Al Spangler, whose single into center field scored Buddin. Mejías struck out with runners in scoring position for the second time in two innings, and 33-year-old rookie Pidge Browne grounded to first to keep the Colts’ lead at 1-0.10

Cardwell worked out of another jam in the third, when Ranew – in his first big-league start11 – doubled to left field for his first hit. With two out and runners on first and third, Stone grounded out to second baseman Ken Hubbs.

Then came the fateful fourth inning. Mejías laced a two-out double to left field but rounded the second-base bag too far. Future Hall of Famer Billy Williams’s peg to Hubbs caught Mejías off base, and Burkhart called him out. Mejías threw his helmet in frustration and was ejected. Craft – on his 47th birthday – “got his walking papers when he went to Mejías’ defense,” the Chicago Tribune wrote.12 It was the second big-league ejection for Mejías and the third for Craft.13

(Some baseball reference sources list Craft’s name first, presumably due to alphabetization.14 News coverage from both cities makes clear, though, that Mejías was run first.15)

Coach Lum Harris took over managing duties.16 Replacing Mejías in right field was Weekly, a 24-year-old from Waterproof, Louisiana, in his second big-league game.17

The Cubs left future Hall of Famer Ernie Banks at second base in the fourth following a walk and a groundout. The Colts wasted an even better opportunity in the fifth when leadoff hitter Browne tripled for his first major-league hit. A strikeout and two groundouts stranded him.

In the sixth, the Cubs developed a new variant of close-but-no-cigar. With Hubbs on first and one out, Banks drilled a ball down the left-field line – “a cinch game-tying double if fair,” the Houston Post reported.18 Home-plate umpire Jocko Conlan looked to ump Frank Walsh, standing between second and third bases, who called the drive foul. (The umping crew was one member short, as Chris Pelekoudas was ill.19) The Cubs protested fruitlessly.20 Banks popped to third, and Hubbs was caught trying to steal second.

Weekly joined the parade of players getting their first big-league hits in the seventh. He hit a 400-foot solo home run to center field, giving the Colts a 2-0 lead.21 The Houstonians got runners to second and third with two out on two singles and a stolen base. Again the runners expired in scoring position as Joey Amalfitano struck out.

Santo led off the Cubs’ seventh with their fourth hit, a single, and took second base on a passed ball. Chicago frittered away the opportunity: The next three batters grounded back to the mound or flied out.

Cuno Barragan hit for Cardwell in the eighth, and righty Dave Gerard took the mound in the ninth in his fourth big-league appearance. He faced five batters, retiring only the first, Spangler, on a grounder. Weekly walked and moved to second when Gerard misplayed Browne’s grounder; Jim Golden ran for Browne. Jim Pendleton and Ranew both singled to right field, scoring Weekly and Golden for a 4-0 lead.

Gerard gave way to Barney Schultz, who faced three batters and retired one. Amalfitano’s fly to right field brought Pendleton across the plate. Schultz hit Buddin with a pitch to put runners on first and second. Stone, a light hitter even by pitchers’ standards,22 banged a single into center field to score Ranew, bringing the Colts’ lead to 6-0. Tappe beckoned another newcomer to the big leagues, pitcher Jack Warner,23 who got Aspromonte to ground into a force.

The Colts’ final turn at bat included an unusual turn of events. With Pendleton on third, Amalfitano swung at a ball that skipped away from Cubs catcher Moe Thacker. Trying to score on what looked like a wild pitch, Pendleton slid into home and toppled the 62-year-old Conlan, who was in the 23rd season of his Hall of Fame umpiring career. Conlan, shaken but unhurt, ruled the play a foul tip and sent Pendleton back to third. Thacker, clipped by the foul, suffered a minor hand injury.24

The Cubs went down uneventfully in the ninth, and the game – seen by 3,835 fans in 40-degree weather25 – ended in 2 hours and 49 minutes.

For Stone, the comeback heralded by two shutouts in one week was short-lived. He was demoted to the bullpen in mid-May and won only one more game for Houston before being traded to the Chicago White Sox on June 25.26 He made 17 relief appearances for the White Sox in 1962, then ended his big-league career with 17 relief outings for the 1963 Baltimore Orioles.27

Two Cubs pitchers later won World Series titles – starter and loser Cardwell with the 1969 Mets, Schultz with the 1964 Cardinals.

Mejías’s hitting streak ended the next day. He recorded another first on May 10, when he hit the Colts’ first inside-the-park home run off Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers.28 Despite his noteworthy season, the Colts traded him to the Boston Red Sox for Pete Runnels in November 1962.29 Mejías concluded his career with two seasons there.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Thomas Merrick and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks Games Project chair John Fredland for research assistance.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN196204190.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B04190CHN1962.htm

Notes

1 The Colts made Mejías the 11th pick in the October 1961 expansion draft. The Pirates had signed Mejías as an amateur free agent before the 1953 season, and he’d played parts of six seasons with Pittsburgh between 1955 and 1961.

2 To be specific, Mejías led the 1962 Colts in plate appearances (610), at-bats (566), runs (82), hits (162), home runs (24), RBIs (76), stolen bases (12), batting average (.286), slugging average (.445), and total bases (252). Less favorably, he also led Colts batters in strikeouts (83) and grounded into 13 double plays, the latter tied with Hal Smith and Joey Amalfitano for most on the team. Defensively, Mejías also led the NL in errors by a right fielder, with 13.

3 The Houston team played the 1962 through 1964 season as the Colt .45s, then rebranded as the Astros. The new name paid tribute to Houston’s status as a hub of the US space program.

4 The Colts closed the season with a 64-96 record and two ties, in eighth place, 36½ games behind the NL champion San Francisco Giants. The Cubs closed in ninth at 59-103, 42½ games back, while the Mets finished 10th and last with a 40-120 record and one tie, 60½ games out of first.

5 Rich Puerzer, “The Chicago Cubs’ College of Coaches: A Management Innovation that Failed,” Society for American Baseball Research, The National Pastime (Vol. 26: 2006), accessed online August 2024, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-chicago-cubs-college-of-coaches-a-management-innovation-that-failed/. Philip Wrigley abandoned the College of Coaches concept prior to the 1963 season.

6 Hal Woodeshick (eight innings) and Turk Farrell (one inning) combined to pitch the Colts’ first shutout in the team’s second game, also against Chicago and also a 2-0 victory. Stone’s win the next day was the team’s first complete-game shutout.

7 Stone attained trivia fame in the 1954 All-Star Game, which he won without retiring a batter. Stone entered with two outs in the top of the eighth and the AL trailing 9-8, and caught Red Schoendienst trying to steal home. The AL rallied to take an 11-9 lead in the bottom of the eighth and went on to win. Bill Nowlin and David E. Skelton, “Dean Stone,” SABR Biography Project, accessed August 2024, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Dean-Stone/.

8 Stone’s SABR biography does not indicate that he was injured during this period; it appears that he was simply ineffective.

9 Dozer, “Houston Snaps 1 Game Victory String, 6 to 0.”

10 It was Browne’s third big-league game and first big-league start. The 1962 season was Browne’s only one in the majors, and he was predominantly used as a left-handed pinch-hitter, appearing in 65 games but getting only 100 at-bats.

11 He was making his third big-league appearance, but had appeared as a pinch-hitter in both of his earlier games.

12 Dozer, “Houston Snaps 1 Game Victory String, 6 to 0.” Both Houston papers’ game accounts said that the Cubs’ Elder White had thrown his batting helmet the previous day without being ejected, and that Craft was thumbed after pressing Burkhart on this apparent double standard.

13 According to Retrosheet records in August 2024. While playing for the Pirates, Mejías had been ejected in the second game of a doubleheader on August 16, 1959, also for arguing an out call at second base. As manager of the Athletics, Craft was ejected on July 29, 1958, for disputing ball and strike calls, and on August 18, 1958, for arguing a home-run call.

14 For instance, as of August 2024, the Ejections line in the game’s Retrosheet box score – under the list of umpires, and above the time of game and attendance – listed Craft before Mejías. Retrosheet’s list of ejections for the 1962 Colt .45s also listed Craft ahead of Mejías. “The Ejections for the 1962 Houston Colt .45s,” Retrosheet, accessed August 2024, https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/TEHOU1962.htm.

15 Richard Dozer, “Houston Snaps 1 Game Victory String, 6 to 0,” Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1962: 4:1; Zarko Franks, “Colts Home After 6-0 Win Over Cubbies,” Houston Chronicle, April 20, 1962: 3:1; Mickey Herskowitz, “Happy Birthday Harry: Colts Stone Cubs 6-0,” Houston Post, April 20, 1962: 1:5.

16 Mickey Herskowitz, “Help from Lefty Kismet,” Houston Post, April 20, 1962: 5:2.

17 Waterproof is in the northeastern part of the state, close to the Mississippi state line. It gets its name from a long-ago claim that, although it is close to the Mississippi River, it is relatively flood-free compared with other nearby locations. Jack Barlow, “Curious Louisiana: How Did the Town of Waterproof Get Its Name?,” Baton Route (Louisiana) Advocate, posted April 9, 2023, https://www.theadvocate.com/curious_louisiana/how-did-waterproof-get-its-name/article_7b83c532-d3cd-11ed-85ce-6b47ba1f8eec.html.

18 Herskowitz, “Happy Birthday Harry: Colts Stone Cubs 6-0.”

19 Edgar Munzel, “Colts Enjoy Last Laugh 6-0,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 20, 1962: 72.

20 Dozer, “Houston Snaps 1 Game Victory String, 6 to 0.” Dozer also reported that members of the Cubs’ bullpen said the ball was foul.

21 Herskowitz, “Happy Birthday Harry: Colts Stone Cubs 6-0.” Franks, in the Houston Chronicle, estimated the homer’s distance as 425 feet. Weekly hit five homers in 53 big-league games across three seasons.

22 In eight seasons in the majors, Stone collected 15 hits in 170 at-bats for an average of .088. He drove in 12 runs; this one was his 11th.

23 Warner was playing his fifth big-league game.

24 Munzel, “Colts Enjoy Last Laugh 6-0”; “Jocko’s Right on Top of the Play” (photo and caption), Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1962: 4:1.

25 Franks, “Colts Home After 6-0 Win Over Cubbies.”

26 Full terms of the trade: Stone to the White Sox, Russ Kemmerer to the Colt .45s.

27 Stone was also retroactively credited with five saves with the 1962 White Sox and one with the 1963 Orioles, though saves did not become an official major-league statistic until 1969.

28 Houston Astros 1998 media guide: 287. Coincidentally, the first inside-the-park homer given up by the Colts/Astros – hit by Richie Ashburn of the Mets – came off Dean Stone in his final appearance with Houston, on June 23, 1962.

29 The Red Sox were reportedly drawn to Mejías’ right-handed power; the Colts, to Runnels’ status as a two-time American League batting champion. Bob Holbrook, “Sox Trade Runnels for Slugger,” Boston Globe, November 26, 1962: 1. The Globe played up Mejías’ temper in its coverage of the trade, running a photo of him as a Pirate throwing his batting helmet and saying he “isn’t expected to be as placid a player as some.” “Yes, He Can Throw” (photo and caption), Boston Globe, November 26, 1962: 13.