August 28, 1972: Minor-league team owners in Elmira write themselves into lineup

Christmas card sent by Carl Fazio and Kip Horsburgh, featuring them in Elmira Pioneers uniforms.

By the time August 28, 1972, arrived, Carl Fazio and Kip Horsburgh were overdue for a few smiles.

The friends and business partners, both in their early 20s, had purchased the Elmira (New York) Pioneers of the Double-A Eastern League in late 1971 after a successful season running a Rookie-level team in Idaho.1 With a reputation as “live-wire, inovative [sic] promoters,” they affiliated with the Cleveland Indians and looked forward to reinvigorating pro baseball in Elmira.2

But Hurricane Agnes in late June turned the season into a nightmare. The Pioneers’ ballpark, Dunn Field, flooded so thoroughly that the team couldn’t play there for 28 days. The Pioneers hit the road and played on, but their finances and their won-lost record never recovered.3 By late August, the talent-strapped team was parked firmly in last place as the city around it continued to struggle with devastation.

With nothing to lose, former college outfielders Fazio and Horsburgh signed themselves to contracts and started the second game of an August 28 doubleheader against the West Haven (Connecticut) Yankees.4 Neither man got a hit in a 9-2 loss, but both fielded flawlessly and avoided striking out at the plate. Most importantly, Horsburgh said, “I had more fun than I’ve had in a long time.”5

The teams entered August 28 at opposite ends of the EL’s American Division. West Haven, a New York Yankees farm club, sat in first place with a 77-54 record, 16 games ahead of second-place Pittsfield.6 The Yankees had already clinched the division title.7 Elmira held fourth and last place with a 41-88 record, 35½ games behind West Haven.8

The junior Yankees had taken both ends of a doubleheader from the Pioneers the previous day, winning the first game 1-0 and the nightcap 3-2 in 14 innings.9 When the two teams reconvened for another doubleheader on August 28, West Haven continued its dominance in the first game. Elmira starter Bob Grossman allowed just five hits and one unearned run in six innings, but West Haven’s Larry Gowell bested him with seven innings of two-hit shutout ball for a 1-0 win.10 Both ends of the doubleheader were seven-inning games.

The Yankees’ manager, future Hall of Famer Bobby Cox,11 sent five future major leaguers onto the field for the second game. They were second baseman George Zeber, right fielder Charlie Spikes, first baseman Otto Vélez, left fielder Wayne Nordhagen, and starting pitcher Dave Cheadle. A sixth Yankee, catcher Grady Little, never made the majors as a player, but managed and coached with four teams between 1996 and 2007.

Spikes, at 21, was having an especially outstanding season. At year’s end, he led the loop with a .579 slugging percentage, and his .309 batting average, 26 home runs, and 83 RBIs ranked among the EL’s top 10 hitters. A first-round pick of the Yankees in the June 1969 amateur draft, Spikes received his first big-league call-up a few days after the Elmira series, debuting as New York’s starting right fielder on September 1 against the Chicago White Sox.

Cheadle had also been a first-round selection of the Yankees in the June 1970 draft. The left-hander was solid for West Haven, going 9-9 with a 3.57 ERA in 25 games, all starts. He pitched for the Yankees’ Triple-A farm club in Syracuse in 1973 before a trade in mid-August sent him to the Atlanta Braves, where he made his only two big-league appearances that September.

Elmira manager Len Johnston’s lineup included two future big-leaguers in shortstop Rob Belloir, a .198 hitter that season, and right fielder Tommy Smith. Two others, Larry Johnson and Jim Kern, appeared later in the game as a pinch-hitter and relief pitcher respectively. On the mound was lefty Tom Burkert, making his only start of the season in a team-leading 42 appearances. Burkert, formerly of Eastern Michigan University, ended the season with a 3-6 record and a 3.86 ERA and never again pitched professionally.12

But the most notable names in the lineup were 22-year-old Fazio in center field and 25-year-old Horsburgh in left.13 They’d played baseball at Cleveland’s Hawken School and at Hobart College and Bowdoin College respectively.14 Horsburgh also made a brief appearance in 1971 with the Magic Valley Cowboys of the Pioneer League, the Rookie-level team the two men ran that season.15

Except for a few grumblers, the Elmira players supported the idea, according to Fazio and Horsburgh. Manager Johnston had bonded with the owners during their shared struggles that season and also supported their proposal. Johnston helped by discussing the plan with Cox, who had no objections. “We were very respectful of the game of baseball and of Len, and we didn’t want to embarrass anybody,” Horsburgh said. By Fazio’s account, they made no attempt to tell the Indians, nor did the parent club comment afterward.16

Unlike the opener, the second game was never close. Burkert surrendered three runs in the first, giving West Haven a quick lead. Sixth-place hitter Nordhagen drove in the second and third runs with a single.17

The Elmira Star-Gazette noted that Fazio tracked down and caught Little’s long fly ball for the final out of the first and mentioned that Fazio and Horsburgh cleanly fielded hits to the outfield. Horsburgh later boasted that he’d hit the cutoff man.18

Fazio and Horsburgh both grounded out in their only at-bats, in the first inning. More than 50 years later, Fazio still remembered the cadence of his at-bat. He took a ball; swung and missed for a strike; swung far too late at an overpowering fastball; then took another ball for a 2-and-2 count. “I said, ‘No way is this guy going to walk the GM of the opposing team. I’m swinging at this pitch no matter what it is,’” Fazio said. He grounded to short.19

The Yankees salted the game away with four more runs in the third, driving Burkert from the mound with two outs. His final pitching line included eight hits, seven runs, six earned runs, three walks, and one strikeout, as well as two wild pitches and a balk.

Unfortunately, newspaper game accounts lacked specifics on how the runs scored. It’s also unclear whether Fazio and Horsburgh were still on the field for the Yankees’ third-inning rally: Some accounts say they played 2½ innings, others only 2.20

Spikes was most likely in the middle of the big rallies, as he went 4-for-4 on the day with two doubles, a triple, and three runs scored. Bob Carson, who replaced Nordhagen in left field, collected a double and also drove in two runs. Zeber went 2-for-5 with a run and an RBI.

The Pioneers treated the 697 fans on hand to a brief burst of offense in the third inning, after Fazio and Horsburgh’s departure. Third baseman Terry Wedgewood was nearing the end of his second and last pro season, in which he hit .222. His two-base throwing error had contributed to the run that cost the Pioneers the first game.21 But, facing a future big-leaguer in Cheadle, Wedgewood crashed a double, driving in teammates Michael Burger and Dan Covert to make the score 7-2.22

West Haven posted single runs in the fourth and sixth innings off reliever Dennis Queen, a lefty chosen out of a Michigan community college in the third round of the June 1970 draft. The only Elmira pitcher to find success was 23-year-old Kern, who pitched a hitless seventh inning with one strikeout. In his fourth pro season, Kern spent more time starting than relieving, going 3-11 with a 4.33 ERA in 22 games, including 14 starts. Converting to full-time relief with the Cleveland Indians in 1976, he went on to make three All-Star teams and win the American League Rolaids Relief Man of the Year award in 1979.

Cheadle went all the way for the Yankees, scattering six hits, striking out three, and closing out the doubleheader sweep in 2 hours and 20 minutes. Burkert took the loss. The Yankees went on to end the season at 84-56, the Pioneers at 46-91.

The August 28 game “was just a fun little moment, a nice thing for us,” Horsburgh recalled later. “It had been such a miserable season. The flood was so destructive and devastating for so many people.”23 The game earned Fazio and Horsburgh an interview with the Boston Globe, where columnist Ray Fitzgerald noted: “[T]hey were okay, but it would take more than a couple of front office transfers to get the Pioneers out of the ditch they had fallen into.”24

Their on-field appearance wasn’t the season’s only highlight for Horsburgh and Fazio. During the Pioneers’ June and July exile in Geneva and Waterbury, Connecticut, the team received offers to move elsewhere – but Horsburgh and Fazio insisted on cleaning up Dunn Field and coming back.25 In gratitude, Elmira Mayor Richard Loll declared August 15 “Kip Horsburgh-Carl Fazio Appreciation Night,” taking part in a plaque presentation to the determined co-owners.26

The bright moments couldn’t make up for an estimated season-ending loss of $15,000 to $20,000, though. Nor could it repair a difficult relationship with the parent club: Fazio and Horsburgh wanted more support, while the Indians reportedly disliked Dunn Field and Elmira’s cool, damp spring weather.27 The owners dissolved their agreement with the Indians in September and sold the team to interests in Waterbury the following month.28

Fazio and Horsburgh had bought the Pioneers to gain experience as a steppingstone to major-league front-office jobs, and they both made it. Fazio later served as the Indians’ vice president of marketing,29 while Horsburgh held senior positions in the front offices of the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners and served as a trustee of the development group that built Cleveland’s Progressive Field.30 None of their subsequent jobs involved taking the field, and neither man played another professional game after August 28, 1972.

Shortly after the game, Fazio and Horsburgh issued each other formal releases from the team. As of 2024, Horsburgh still had his.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo and copy-edited by Len Levin.

The author thanks Carl Fazio and Kip Horsburgh for participating in interviews, and thanks Horsburgh for sharing the contents of his scrapbook from the 1972 season. The author also thanks the New Haven, Connecticut, Free Public Library for research assistance.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the August 29, 1972, editions of the Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette and New Haven (Connecticut) Register published box scores.

Photos courtesy of Kip Horsburgh.

Notes

1 Al Mallette, “Eastern League OKs Elmira Entry for ’72 Season,” Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette, November 2, 1971: 14. Their 1971 team, the Magic Valley Cowboys of Twin Falls, Idaho, set a short-season attendance record for a Twin Falls team with 27,025 fans, up more than 9,000 from the previous season. “Cowboys End Good Season,” South Idaho Press (Burley, Idaho), September 7, 1971: 8.

2 Al Mallette, “Baseball Issue,” Elmira Star-Gazette, January 23, 1972: 3E.

3 Kurt Blumenau, “July 18, 1972: Home Sweet Home: Elmira Ends 28-Day Flood Displacement with Win,” SABR Games Project, accessed November 2024, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/july-18-1972-home-sweet-home-elmira-ends-28-day-flood-displacement-with-win/.

4 “Pioneers Get Help?” Geneva (New York) Times, August 26, 1972: 20.

5 “Pioneers Drop Pair; End Home Season Tonight,” Elmira Star-Gazette, August 29, 1972: 16.

6 “Eastern” (Eastern League standings chart), Elmira Star-Gazette, August 28, 1972: 13.

7 “EL Yanks Pad Division Lead,” New Haven (Connecticut) Register, August 29, 1972: 23.

8 “Eastern.”

9 “Pioneers Waste Strong Pitching in Twin Losses,” Elmira Star-Gazette, August 28, 1972: 13.

10 “Pioneers Drop Pair; End Home Season Tonight.” Gowell, a right-hander from Maine in his sixth pro season, posted a 14-6 record and 2.54 ERA in 26 games, including 25 starts, with West Haven in 1972. This performance earned him his only major-league call-up; he made two appearances for the parent Yankees on September 21 and October 4.

11 Cox had played third base for the parent club in New York in 1968 and 1969 and served as a coach for the World Series-winning 1977 Yankees before beginning his 29-season major-league managerial career with the Atlanta Braves in 1978.

12 The 1972 season was Burkert’s third as a pro.

13 Carl Fazio and Kip Horsburgh, interviewed by the author in November 2024, affirmed that Fazio played center field and Horsburgh left. Some news accounts and box scores reversed their positions. United Press International, “Mud Hens Sink the Wings; Pioneers, a New Twist,” Canandaigua (New York) Daily Messenger, August 29, 1972: 7.

14 “Celebration of Hawken’s Pioneers of Varsity Athletics: 1961-1969,” Hawken School website, accessed November 2024, https://www.hawken.edu/sports-pioneers; “Pioneers Get Help?” Horsburgh played only sparingly at Bowdoin, but Fazio was the captain of the Hobart baseball team, according to both men.

15 “Pioneers Get Help?”; “Angels Spoil Cowboys’ Final Home Game by 8-7,” Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News, August 30, 1971: 15. According to the Twin Falls newspaper, Horsburgh had one at-bat for the Cowboys and struck out swinging. Interviewed in 2024, Fazio and Horsburgh said Fazio did not play in Twin Falls because he was still attending Hobart College during the academic year and playing on the school’s baseball team. He would have lost his college eligibility by playing in a professional game.

16 Fazio and Horsburgh interviews.

17 Unless otherwise noted, all game information is taken from “Pioneers Drop Pair; End Home Season Tonight.”

18 “Mud Hens Sink the Wings; Pioneers, a New Twist”; “Pioneers Drop Pair; End Home Season Tonight.”

19 Fazio interview. Remembering the third-pitch fastball, Fazio said: “That ball just exploded by me. I’d never seen anything like that before in my Division 3 college experience.” Unfortunately, Cheadle died in 2012, so his perspective on the game is lost to history.

20 “Mud Hens Sink the Wings; Pioneers, a New Twist”; “Pioneers Drop Pair; End Home Season Tonight.” Horsburgh said in 2024 that he and Fazio were supposed to play only one inning. But the Pioneers’ regular center fielder, upset by their appearance in the lineup, had refused to leave the locker room. When Johnston looked down the bench and didn’t see the player available to enter the game, he told Fazio and Horsburgh to enjoy another inning.

21 “EL Yanks Pad Division Lead.” Wedgewood threw away Bob Carson’s grounder, allowing him to reach second. Jim Deidel then drove in Carson with a single for the game’s only run.

22 Again, details are lacking in game accounts. Burger and Covert are not credited with hits in the box score, so it’s not clear how they reached base. They might have drawn the two walks handed out by Cheadle, or they might have reached on one of the two errors credited to first baseman Vélez.

23 Horsburgh interview.

24 Ray Fitzgerald, “Owners, Players One In [sic] the Same,” Boston Globe, September 3, 1972: 51.

25 Al Mallette, “Dunn Field by July 8?” Elmira Star-Gazette, June 28, 1972: 19. The offers reportedly came from Waterbury, Connecticut, and Manchester, New Hampshire, two cities that had lost Eastern League teams.

26 “Monday Proclaimed Horsburgh-Fazio Appreciation Night,” Elmira Star-Gazette, August 12, 1972: 8; “Pioneers Split with Pirates,” Elmira Star-Gazette, August 17, 1972: 29. The original celebration date of August 14 was rained out and the ceremony was pushed back. “Hall of Fame, EL Night Reset for Wednesday,” Elmira Star-Gazette, August 15, 1972: 12.

27 Al Mallette, “Pioneers, Cleveland Dissolve Working Agreement,” Elmira Star-Gazette, September 6, 1972: 25. According to an online inflation calculator provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, $15,000 to $20,000 in September 1972 had the same spending power as $112,469 to $149,959 in October 2024.

28 Mallette, “Pioneers, Cleveland Dissolve Working Agreement”; Mark Fleisher, “Elmira’s EL Franchise Sold to Waterbury Group,” Elmira Star-Gazette, October 26, 1972: 39. Elmira subsequently obtained a team in the short-season Class A New York-Penn League.

29 Alongside other, more successful promotions, Fazio also oversaw the 10-Cent Beer Night promotion of June 4, 1974, that ended in a riot and a forfeited game. (Fazio did not invent the idea of 10-Cent Beer Night – Horsburgh’s employers, the Texas Rangers, had held one about a week earlier – but he was overseeing the Indians’ marketing at the time of the promotion in Cleveland.) Fazio and Horsburgh interviews; Frederick C. Bush, “June 4, 1974: 10-Cent Beer Riot at Cleveland Stadium Leads to Forfeit,” SABR Games Project, accessed November 2024, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/june-4-1974-10-cent-beer-riot-at-cleveland-stadium-leads-to-forfeit/.

30 “Celebration of Hawken’s Pioneers of Varsity Athletics: 1961-1969,” Hawken School website; Fazio and Horsburgh interviews.