August 20, 1944: Stan Musial’s four hits in first four innings help Cardinals crush Braves

St. Louis had won nine straight games from July 23 to July 29, 1944, and looked to win nine in a row again going into an August 20 doubleheader opener against the visitors from Boston. Although star outfielder Stan Musial “had gone hitless in his last ten times at bat[,]”1 the Cardinals had continued to pull away from the rest of the National League. The pitching matchup heavily favored the home team as 28-year-old rookie phenom Ted Wilks (11-1) faced Johnny Hutchings (0-1), who earlier in 1944 had a six-game losing streak in the minor leagues.2

The Braves threatened immediately with the first three batters reaching base. Whitey Wietelmann singled, Tommy Holmes doubled, and Butch Nieman walked. Wilks wiggled out of the jam thanks to two groundballs. The first resulted in a force at the plate, and the second ended the inning on a 6-4-3 double play started by eventual 1944 MVP Marty Marion.

The failure to turn a groundball into an out started the beginning of the end for Hutchings. Third baseman Dee Phillips made an error on a grounder by St. Louis leadoff hitter Emil Verban, the first of a career-worst three errors Phillips would make in this game. Boston suffered through poor third-base play all season. In his history of the team, Harold Kaese noted in recapping 1944, “Personnel changed so often that the Braves tried ten different men at third base during the season.”3

The Cardinals capitalized on the miscue. Johnny Hopp singled Verban to second. Musial ended his hitless streak with an RBI single to put St. Louis up 1-0. Walker Cooper walked, loading the bases. Ray Sanders’ single made it 2-0. Hutchings finally got an out by fanning Whitey Kurowski, but Danny Litwhiler singled in two runs to make the score 4-0 and put a swift end to Hutchings’ afternoon.

Of the seven starts Hutchings made in 1944, this was the worst. While giving up less than one hit per inning for the season, he had a few games where the hits just kept on coming. In his return to Boston nine days earlier against Cincinnati, Hutchings retired four of the first five Reds batters before yielding a startling seven straight hits.

Ira Hutchinson came on in relief. He got one out before RBI singles by Wilks and Verban extended the lead to 6-0. Hopp’s fly out finally ended the frame for St. Louis.

Wilks set down the Braves in order in the top of the second. In the bottom of the inning, Musial singled before Walker Cooper’s homer put the Cardinals up 8-0.

Pitcher-first baseman-outfielder Max Macon batted for Hutchinson and singled to start the third. Another DP allowed Wilks to face the minimum again.

The Boston Post wrote of the bottom of the third, “Macon took over [the pitching] … and it appeared to be little more than batting practice as Musial hit for the circuit with one on and Sanders also connected with a mate aboard in the same inning.”4 Thanks to the two homers, the Cardinals led 12-0.

The Cardinals had “felt safe” in trading [the mighty Johnny] Mize to open the position for Sanders, a “great defensive first baseman. …”5 Unlike his predecessor (359 career round-trippers), and teammates Musial and Cooper (who had 475 and 173 respectively), Sanders generally hit with little power, finishing with 42 home runs in 630 games. Through this game, however, Sanders had 10 homers, two more than Musial and three more than Cooper. Sanders had three RBIs in this game and tacked on another in the nightcap to give him 89 for the season. He finished 1944 tied for fourth in the NL with a career-high 102 RBIs.

The fourth inning mirrored the earlier innings. Boston failed to score, and St. Louis increased its lead. With two outs, Verban singled, Hopp doubled the leadoff hitter to third, and Musial knocked in both with a double to put the Cardinals up 14-0. Musial was now 4-for-4 with five RBIs.

In the fifth, the Braves had a harmless single, and St. Louis piled on against Macon. With one out, Kurowski doubled and Litwhiler walked. Marion had an RBI single to make the score 15-0. With runners on first and second and one out, Wilks sacrificed, but Macon retired Verban. For the first time in the game, St. Louis had completed an inning without a Musial hit.

By pulling Musial and three other starters as the game went to the sixth, St. Louis manager Billy Southworth “used football tactics to keep down his own score and avoid further humiliation of Bob Quinn’s All-Stars from Boston,” noted the Boston Globe. “He yanked his varsity and threw in second and third-stringers like Knute Rockne trying to keep from running up a score on Slippery Rock.”6

With that, the contest settled down into the rhythm of a regular rout until the eighth, when Wilks yielded a handful of runs due to disinterest, weakness, or both. With one out Warren Huston, who had replaced Wietelmann at shortstop in the seventh, singled. Holmes also singled, and Nieman doubled to get Boston on the board at 15-1. Ab Wright smacked a three-run homer to make the score 15-4. Stew Hofferth singled, the fifth consecutive hit by the Braves, and after an out, Phillips hit an RBI double for a fifth run.

Ben Cardoni finished the game for Boston with three scoreless innings. The outing represented the only contest in Cardoni’s 36-game career in which he gave up no runs while pitching at least three innings.

Seven outs later, the “whipping”7 ended 15-5. Wilks went all the way. Giving up 13 hits – the most he would yield in any of his 385 games – and five runs to a Boston team that finished sixth in the NL in runs scored made Wilks’ pitching line looked less effective on paper than in the context of the game.

The Braves went on to win the second game, 5-3, with Woody Rich beating Freddy Schmidt, and Musial had two more hits, pulling ahead of Dixie Walker of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Hopp, and Ducky Medwick of the New York Giants.8 These four ended the season as the top hitters by batting average in the NL, albeit in a different order as Walker batted .357, Musial .347, Medwick .337, and Hopp .336.

Musial finished the season as the league leader in on-base percentage (.440), slugging percentage (.549), doubles (51), and extra-base hits (77). Clearly the best player in the NL in 1944, Musial still finished a distant fourth in the MVP voting, a result that probably bothered him little given the triumph of the Cardinals in the World Series.

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN194408201.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1944/B08201SLN1944.htm

Photo credit: Stan Musial, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 Associated Press, “Braves Stop Cards after 15-5 Defeat,” New York Times, August 21, 1944: 10.

2 “American Association,” The Sporting News, June 1, 1944: 24.

3 Harold Kaese, The Boston Braves, 1871-1953 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 257.

4 “Rich Cops Nightcap for Tribe,” Boston Post, August 21, 1944: 9. The game represented Macon’s only mound appearance in 1944. He had, however, previously pitched in 79 major-league games dating back to 1938. He finished his pitching career with a 17-19 record and a 4.24 ERA. 

5 Frederick G. Lieb, The St. Louis Cardinals: The Story of a Great Baseball Club (New York: Van Rees Press, 1947), 195. Ironically given the subject of this essay and the outcome of this game, the Boston Braves in 1950 donated the copy of this book that the author reviewed at the Boston Public Library.

6 “Braves Suffer a ‘Football’ Defeat at Cards’ Hands,” Boston Globe, August 21, 1944: 11.

7 “Rich Beats Cards, Gives Tribe Split,” Boston Daily Record, August 21, 1944: 34.

8 “Musial Leads Hit Parade,” The Sporting News, August 24, 1944: 14.