August 10, 1995: ‘The Night It Rained Baseballs’ fuels a Dodgers forfeit to Cardinals

Ballpark discounts and giveaways have fueled memorable moments, including some that certain teams would rather forget. In the second half of a doubleheader on September 26, 1942, after the New York Giants gave free admission to any child who brought scrap metal for the World War II effort, mobs of kids stormed the Polo Grounds field. In Cleveland on June 4, 1974, “10-Cent Beer Night” led to on-field streaking, punching, and chair-throwing. On June 12, 1979, after Chicago’s Comiskey Park offered 98-cent tickets to anyone who brought disco albums to destroy, attendees opted to fling their vinyl like frisbees, toss cherry bombs, and rip up grass.1 In each of these cases, umpires held the home team responsible for the chaos; as punishment, they declared the visiting team victorious by forfeit.

Before August 10, 1995 – “Ball Night” at Dodger Stadium – major-league baseball had gone forfeit-free for 16 years. Yes, a 232-day players strike had canceled the 1994 World Series and driven angry fans to toss items onto fields upon baseball’s return: whiskey bottles and cigarette lighters in Detroit, beer in Milwaukee, and pennant sticks in Pittsburgh.2 But no post-strike protests had elicited anything beyond an umpire’s warning or brief delay.

So the Los Angeles Dodgers’ promotion went on as planned. As they had done at every other Ball Night dating back at least 20 years, ballpark personnel handed out baseballs.3 The souvenirs had the signatures of manager Tommy Lasorda and his players. Of the sellout crowd of 53,561, some 15,000 guests aged 14 or younger got one.4

Fans also arrived hoping to claim a less tangible gift: a return to bragging rights. If they completed a three-game sweep of the bottom-dwelling St. Louis Cardinals that night, the Dodgers would tie the Colorado Rockies for first place in the National League West Division – the rank they had held 364 days earlier, right before the season-ending strike. On the mound was Hideo Nomo, a recent All-Star and soon-to-be Rookie of the Year whose tornado-like delivery had a way of freezing hitters. The home team was an easy favorite.

With the gametime sky clear – and free of rain – the Dodgers took the field.

But hints of trouble surfaced. Nomo, who had been undefeated at home, followed a quiet first inning with a tense second. Brian Jordan’s 15th home run of the year put the Cardinals ahead first. A walk to Darnell Coles, a single by Mark Sweeney, and a wild pitch to Scott Hemond put two runners in scoring position. Nomo retired the next eight St. Louis batters, but in the fourth, he surrendered a home run to Sweeney – the lefty hitter’s first since he became a big-leaguer six days earlier. Cardinals 2, Dodgers 0.

It was custom for whoever catches a major-league batter’s first home-run ball to return that ball to the batter. After Dodgers outfielders tried getting the fan who caught Sweeney’s homer to follow the unwritten rule, the fan tossed a ball onto the field. The thrown ball reached first baseman Eric Karros, who looked and realized: “It’s the wrong ball.” The fan had returned a souvenir ball instead, presumably as a distraction to cheat Sweeney out of a memento.5

More fans of the still-scoreless Dodgers took aim in the seventh. After St. Louis starter Mark Petkovsek walked Karros and fell behind 3-and-1 on Raúl Mondesí, Cardinals pitching coach Mark Riggins visited the mound. The coach quickly suspected that the rally-hungry crowd thought his huddle was a stalling tactic. “I guess people were a little impatient out there,” Riggins told reporters after the game. “I came into the dugout, and the next thing I knew, balls were flying all over the place.”6

A trickle from the right-field bleachers became an all-front deluge.7 Umpires paused the game. The Cardinals defense and Dodgers offense returned to their dugouts. Groundskeepers cleaned up the field. Public-address announcer Mike Carlucci warned: Anyone caught throwing items risked ejection and arrest.8

When the game continued about six minutes later, the audience’s frustrations grew.9 Mondesí walked, but St. Louis shortstop Tripp Cromer caught catcher Hemond’s pickoff throw and tagged Karros out at second base. A single by Roberto Kelly once again put a tying runner on base, but the hit bore no fruit. A line drive by Billy Ashley landed in the glove of second baseman Ramon Caraballo, who touched second to complete an unassisted, inning-ending double play. “Atrocious” baserunning, to quote St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Rick Hummel, kept Los Angeles scoreless.10

Still down 2-0, the Dodgers eyed a bottom-of-the-eighth comeback. Dave Hansen walked. A pair of groundouts to first base advanced Hansen to third. A left-field single by José Offerman cut the home team’s deficit to one and knocked Petkovsek out of the game. In the next at-bat, Mike Piazza delivered an infield single off rookie reliever T.J. Mathews’ glove.

With two runners on and two outs, the rally’s fate rode on Karros. His at-bat marked a chance to score Offerman, tie the game, and maybe even score Piazza to take the lead.

None of that happened. Karros, who had homered in each of the three previous games, checked his swing on a 1-and-2 fastball. Home-plate umpire Jim Quick ruled that the pitch had hugged the outside corner for strike three. Three outs. The 1992 NL Rookie of the Year let out some four-lettered profanity.11

The inning was over, but Karros’s astonishment over the strike-three call was not. After manning first base during Dodgers reliever Mark Guthrie’s one-two-three top of the ninth, he got back to yelling. He insisted that the pitch should have been called a ball. His argument got louder. And he kept going until Quick ejected him from the game.

The crowd answered back. As the Cardinals defense got in place for the bottom of the ninth, baseballs again pelted the field. St. Louis closer Tom Henke, by his own account, was almost hit in the head as he left the bullpen.12 Outfielders John Mabry and Brian Jordan exchanged glances as they barely missed getting hit.13

The first at-bat of the Dodgers’ last licks sparked more outrage. After a low 3-and-0 pitch by Henke, Mondesí began walking to first base as if it were ball four, only for Quick to call strike one. The umpire called the next pitch, which Mondesí thought was outside, strike two. A swing at the payoff pitch was strike three. Mondesí turned around, gave Quick some snap comments, and became the night’s second ejected Dodger.14

Lasorda rushed to Mondesí’s defense. Despite the skipper’s decades-old reputation for tussling, he later insisted that he wasn’t trying to fight Quick: “All I did is go out wanting to know why he was throwing my players out.”15 Regardless, he soon became the umpire’s third ejectee.

As the manager flapped his arms and stomped off the field, another wave of balls landed from as high as the upper deck. Two bottles, one of Southern Comfort whiskey and the other of rum, hit Mabry.16 “I asked the batboy if I could trade my hat for his helmet,” the Cardinals’ right fielder recalled, “but he said ‘no,’ because he was in danger too.”17

It became clear that the kids who had initially received the gift balls were not the ones acting up. “The truly remarkable Ball Night stat is that hundreds of adults seem to have taken their child’s souvenir and sacrificed it to protest Jim Quick’s raggedy strike zone,” baseball historian Paul Jackson later wrote.18

The umpiring crew called another delay. Stadium workers filled buckets with jettisoned balls. Batboys used their helmets to scoop the other discarded items.19 And the public-address announcer told the crowd once more: Don’t throw stuff.20

The teams tried resuming play five minutes later, to no avail. An apple hit Dodgers on-deck hitter Chris Gwynn in the head.21 Another ball nearly plunked Jordan in center field.22

The umpires noticed and immediately declared a forfeit. With roughly 200 balls – or even more – having been thrown from the stands, they ruled that the Dodgers had failed to control their own stadium.23 As such, victory went to the Cardinals.24

All statistics counted. Petkovsek got the win. Nomo took his first home loss. Henke nabbed his 299th career save. Los Angeles remained one game out of first place.

The forfeit almost cost the Dodgers their division title, but oddly enough, an umpire’s judgment saved them. In the 11th inning of a game two nights later, Pittsburgh Pirates rookie catcher Angelo Encarnación scooped up a live ball with his mask, unaware that doing so violated a game rule.25 The umps responded by letting the Dodgers’ runners advance, prompting Roberto Kelly to score the walk-off run from third base. Los Angeles ultimately won the NL West by a single game.26

Even so, what one newspaper referred to as “The Night It Rained Baseballs” led the Dodgers to tweak their Ball Night tradition.27 In 1997 the team renamed the promotion “Ball and Glove Night.” Each child 14 or younger got a glove upon entry, as well as a voucher. All the kids had to do was bring their vouchers to a Los Angeles County library, where they would each receive their promised ball – in a much quieter setting.28

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Tommy Lasorda, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for box scores and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN199508100.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1995/B08100LAN1995.htm

Notes

1 Details regarding these forfeits come from James Forr, “Forfeits,” The National Pastime, Vol. 25 (2005), available at https://sabr.org/journal/article/forfeits/.

2 Associated Press, “Fans Take the Day Off,” La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune, April 27, 1995: B5; “Fans Are Venting Their Anger,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 4, 1995: D2.

3 Barry Stackhammer, the Dodgers’ vice president of marketing, said after the game, “We’ve had Ball Night for 20, 25 years. We will continue to have Ball Night.” Gordon Verrell, “Los Angeles Dodgers,” The Sporting News, August 21, 1995: 24.

4 Ken Daley, “For Dodgers, Forfeit No Joke,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 12, 1995: S1.

5 Paul Jackson, “Ball Night ’95: The Last Forfeit in Baseball History,” Project 3.18, April 28, 2025, https://www.project-318.com/p/ball-night-95-the-last-forfeit-in.

6 Rick Hummel, “Dodgers Fans Strike Out: Ball Day Fiasco Has Umpires Fearing Injury,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 12, 1995: 1C.

7 Lee Barnathan, “Dodgers Don’t Have Ball with Forfeit,” Santa Clarita (California) Signal, August 11, 1995: C1, C3.

8 Daley, “For Dodgers, Forfeit No Joke.”

9 Ken Daley, “Hail of Baseballs, Forfeit Stop Dodgers with One Out in Ninth,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 11, 1995: S1.

10 Rick Hummel, “Unruly LA Fans Give Cardinals Forfeit Victory,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 11, 1995: 1D, 7D.

11 An ESPN SportsCenter clip from the night of August 10, 1995, features a highlight montage of the game. “Dodgers Forfeit to the Cardinals on ESPN Sportcenter [sic], August 1995,” YouTube video (sloppydead217), 1:34, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm4VySz1LUU.

12 Hummel, “Unruly LA Fans Give Cardinals Forfeit Victory.”

13 Anthony Castrovince, “The Wild Story Behind MLB’s Last Forfeit,” MLB.com, December 30, 2024, https://www.mlb.com/news/featured/dodgers-cardinals-last-mlb-forfeit-1995.

14 “Dodgers Forfeit to the Cardinals on ESPN Sportcenter.”

15 Daley, “Hail of Baseballs, Forfeit Stop Dodgers with One Out in Ninth.”

16 Bob Nightengale, “The Day After, Dodgers Still Reeling from Forfeit Fallout,” Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1995: 8.

17 Bob Nightengale, “Players Won’t Be Safe Without Metal Detectors,” The Sporting News, August 21, 1995: 15.

18 Jackson, “Ball Night ’95: The Last Forfeit in Baseball History.”

19 Jackson.

20 Carlucci issued a total of four warnings that night: “before the start of the game … twice in the seventh inning (when balls were first thrown) and once in the ninth,” according to Daley, “For Dodgers, Forfeit No Joke.”

21 Nightengale, “The Day After, Dodgers Still Reeling from Forfeit Fallout.”

22 Home-plate umpire Jim Quick told a reporter after the game, “Jordan was in center field, and I saw a ball just miss him. It was thrown real hard. For the safety of us and the players, that was enough.” John Nadel (Associated Press), “Dodger Fans Give Cardinals a Gift,” Poplar Bluff (Missouri) Daily American Republic: 1B.

23 Estimates have varied regarding the number of souvenir balls thrown that night. A Dodgers spokesperson placed the count at just under 200. See Daley, “For Dodgers, Forfeit No Joke.”

24 The Cardinals were up 2-1 before the forfeit, but according to the 1995 edition of the Official Baseball Rules, “A forfeited game is a game declared by the umpire-in-chief in favor of the offended team by the score of 9 to 0, for violation of the rules”; as a result, the official final score was 9-0. Official Baseball Rules (St. Louis: The Sporting News Publishing Co., 1995), 17. The Dodgers filed an appeal on August 11, with team executive Fred Claire saying the umpires had not warned fans that continued misbehavior would specifically result in a home-team forfeit. In a five-page opinion on August 24, National League President Leonard Coleman upheld the forfeit: “I believe the conduct of several hundred fans on August 10 created a sufficient danger that the umpire’s decision to forfeit the game was justifiable and correct.” Bob Nightengale, “Aug. 10 Forfeit to Cardinals Stands,” Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1995: C5.

25 In the 1995 edition of the Official Baseball Rules, Rule 7.05 states that runners may advance “[t]wo bases, if a fielder deliberately touches a thrown ball with his cap, mask, or any part of his uniform detaches from its proper place on his person.” Official Baseball Rules (1995), 54.

26 The Dodgers ended the 1995 regular season with a 78-66 record, besting the 77-67 Colorado Rockies. They lost the best-of-five NL Division Series to the Cincinnati Reds in three games.

27 In attendance was Utah-based columnist Lee Benson, who days later wrote a personal account of the ordeal. “The Night It Rained Baseballs in Dodger Stadium,” Salt Lake City Deseret News, August 13, 1995, https://www.deseret.com/1995/8/13/19187416/the-night-it-rained-baseballs-in-dodger-stadium/.

28 “Take Me Out to the Library?” Santa Clarita Signal, July 27, 1997: A7.