April 23, 1952: Giants’ Hoyt Wilhelm hits home run in first career at-bat, then earns first career victory

A small crowd of 4,611 braved the “steel gray day”1 at New York’s Polo Grounds to see history being made in a National League game between the hometown Giants and the visiting Boston Braves.2 Hoyt Wilhelm, a 29-year-old rookie right-hander for the Giants, homered in his first career at-bat and then went on to earn his first pitching victory.

The crowd was also treated to seeing “the tallest player in the history of the majors,”3 Boston’s Gene Conley. The 6-foot-8-inch right-hander had been a two-sport star (baseball and basketball) at Washington State University. Conley had spent 1951 (his first professional baseball season) playing for the Hartford Chiefs, in the Class-A Eastern League, winning 20 games with a 2.16 earned-run average. Now in his rookie season in the majors, he was making his second appearance. (He had pitched on April 17 but bore a loss to the Brooklyn Dodgers.) The Braves had won just three of their first nine games, scoring two runs or fewer in five of those games.4

After starting the season with one victory in its first four games, New York won three straight before hosting the Braves for a two-game series beginning with this game. Hoping to add to the winning streak, Giants skipper Leo Durocher nominated Roger Bowman as his starter (the New York left-hander stood a mere 6 feet tall). After four seasons in the minor leagues, Bowman had made two appearances as a late-season call-up in 1949, but then returned to the Giants’ farm system, rejoining the big-league squad in 1951, when he made nine appearances (five starts). This was his first game of the 1952 season.5

The Braves were on the scoreboard first, tallying two runs on four singles in the second inning. Sid Gordon led off with a single into left field. One out later, Walker Cooper singled up the middle, and Boston suddenly had runners at the corners. After Bowman struck out Eddie Mathews, Jack Cusick singled, driving in Gordon and sending Cooper to third. Conley helped his own cause with a single to center, making him perfect at the plate for the season with a bat in his hands.6 Cooper scored, but Cusick was thrown out at the plate trying to score as well, and the inning ended.

New York answered in the home half. Willie Mays led off with a walk and scored onDon Mueller’s triple to left. Alvin Dark followed with a home run, which banged off of the right-field façade. Conley retired the next three Braves batters, but New York had taken the lead, 3-2.

The Braves chased Bowman in the top of the third. Billy Reed singled and Sam Jethroe flied out to deep center. When Bowman walked Earl Torgeson, Durocher made the pitching change, bringing in right-hander Wilhelm. This was Wilhelm’s third relief appearance of the season. His ERA was 0.00; he had faced eight batters in his first two stints and allowed one hit and three walks. Now, he came into a close ballgame with two runners on base. Gordon popped up, but Willard Marshall laced a single to right and Reed scored the tying run. The run was charged to Bowman. Wilhelm retired the next batter (Cooper) to end the Boston threat.

The Giants broke the game open with a four-run rally in the fourth. Mays opened with another walk but was thrown out trying to steal second. Mueller then clubbed a home run, his second of the season. The New York Times reported that the ball traveled 400 feet, landing in the upper right-field seats.7 Dark was hit by a pitch and Wes Westrum followed with a home run that “soared to the left-field roof,”8 ending Conley’s day on the mound. He had allowed just four hits, but they consisted of three homers and a triple. Dick Hoover, another rookie, relieved Conley. This was his second relief appearance of the year.9 The first batter Hoover faced was Wilhelm, who “jab[bed] his bat at an outside pitch”10 and sent the ball into the lower right-field stands, about 270 feet from home plate for a home run.

Wilhelm’s feat marked the 29th time that a major leaguer had hit a home run in his first career at-bat. Even more rare was the fact that Wilhelm was just the fourth pitcher of the twentieth century to accomplish this feat.11 As of the 2024 season, he was just one of two Hall of Famers to hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat.12

Wilhelm’s homer was the Giants’ third round-tripper of the inning. Hoover struggled as the inning continued, yielding a single to Davey Williams and a walk to Bobby Thomson before retiring the side.

New York added a run in the fifth. Mays led off with yet another walk (his third). After Mueller flied out, Dark singled to center fielder Jethroe, and Mays hustled safely to third base. (Dark advanced to second on the throw.) Hoover walked Westrum to load the bases. Wilhelm was back up, and he hit a grounder toward the mound. Hoover fielded it and only had a play at first. Mays scored the Giants’ eighth run of the game.

With two outs in the top of the sixth, Cooper singled to center. Mathews launched a Wilhelm offering well beyond the wall in right, bringing Boston to within three. It was the rookie Mathews’ second homer of the season.13

The score remained 8-5 until the bottom of the eighth. Bob Chipman was on the mound, the fourth Braves hurler of the game.14 The 12-year veteran walked Dave Koslo (who had relieved Wilhelm in the top of the inning) and then retired both Williams and Whitey Lockman. But Chipman’s control left him and he walked the next three batters. Mays’ fourth free pass of the game resulted in an RBI, giving New York its ninth and final tally of the game. Chipman then struck out Mueller, but he had allowed a run despite not yielding a hit in his season debut. Koslo closed out the game for the Giants with a three-up, three-down ninth.

The New York Daily News reported that “the Giants had their long-range artillery in perfect focus and shelled four Boston pitchers,”15 with the result being a 9-5 victory at the Polo Grounds. The four-home-run triumph gave the Giants their fourth straight win. In his 5⅓ innings of work, Wilhelm held the Braves to two runs on six hits and earned the win. His first decision was his first major-league victory. He went on to finish the season with a 15-3 record, leading the majors in appearances (71) and winning percentage (.833), and he led the NL with his 2.43 earned-run average. Wilhelm placed second in the balloting for the NL Rookie-of-the-Year and fourth for the NL Most Valuable Player Award (in both cases just behind Brooklyn’s Joe Black).

For Boston, Conley’s record dropped to 0-2. Just three days after this game, the 21-year-old became the 90th overall pick in the 1952 NBA draft, when he was selected by Red Auerbach’s Boston Celtics as a power forward. He made two more appearances for the 1952 Braves (on April 30 and May 3) before being sent down to the Milwaukee Brewers, Boston’s affiliate in the Triple-A American Association. He played in 39 games for the Celtics in the 1952-53 season (well after the 1952 baseball season ended), but he did report late to the Braves spring training camp in 1953.16

Hoyt Wilhelm, because of his military service in World War II, was 29 years old when he made the Giants’ team at the major-league level in 1952. The knuckleballer pitched for 21 seasons and never hit another home run. He retired in 1972 at the age of 49 after appearing in a then-record 1,070 games. In that span, the reliever had 493 plate appearances, in which he garnered just 38 base hits. He is one of 19 pitchers who homered in his first career at-bat, but he never hit another career home run.17

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NY1/NY1195204230.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1952/B04230NY11952.htm

Photo credit: Hoyt Wilhelm, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Hy Turkin, “Giants’ HR Barrage Scatters Braves, 9-5,” New York Daily News, April 24, 1952: 108. The weather report in the Daily News had called for a cloudy day with showers and a high in the 70s (see “Daily Almanac,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1952: 2).

2 This was the final season that the Braves played in Boston. After drawing just 281,278 fans in 1952 (200,000 fewer than the year before and over 800,000 less than Boston’s American League team, the Red Sox), owner Lou Perini made the decision to move to Milwaukee, where the team’s Triple-A affiliate was located. The Milwaukee Brewers had been a charter member of the American League, but after the inaugural 1901 season, the franchise moved to St. Louis and became the Browns.

3 Turkin. As of the end of the 2023 season, San Francisco pitcher Sean Hjelle was the tallest player in the major leagues (6-feet-11). See https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hjellse01.shtml. Jon Rauch, who pitched for seven different teams between 2002 and 2013, was also 6-feet-11-inches tall.

4 One of those games was a 2-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies, who lost six of their first eight games.

5 Bowman made one other start in the 1952 season for New York. On May 6 he started against the St. Louis Cardinals but pitched only two-thirds of an inning, yielding a hit and two walks. (He also hit a batter.) The Giants put him on waivers and he was claimed by the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 12.

6 Conley singled in his very first at-bat in the majors. He was taken out of the game in fifth inning, before he could get a second plate appearance.

7 Joseph M. Sheehan, “Four Runs in 4th Mark 9-5 Victory,” New York Times, April 24, 1952: 41.

8 Turkin.

9 This was also Hoover’s final game in the majors. His career consisted of two appearances for the 1952 Braves. He pitched a total of 4⅔ innings (facing 26 batters). He did not get a decision and ended up with a 7.71 ERA. Hoover was sent to Triple-A Milwaukee. He pitched for four more seasons in the minors and never made it to the big leagues again.

10 Turkin.

11 See https://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats5.shtml. Regarding pitchers in the twentieth century, Wilhelm’s performance followed those of three others: Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Clise Dudley (April 27, 1929), Boston Red Sox hurler Bill LeFebvre (June 10, 1938), and Brooklyn’s Dan Bankhead (August 26, 1947). Turkin mentioned both LeFebvre and Bankhead in his New York Daily News article as “the only other pitchers in memory to have homered in their inaugural big-league at-bat.” Only five players hit a first-career-at-bat homer before 1900, including two pitchers (Billy Gumbert, Pittsburgh Alleghenys, June 19, 1890, and Bill Duggleby, Philadelphia Phillies, April 21, 1898). Duggleby’s home run was a grand slam.

12 The only other Hall of Fame player to hit a home run in his first career at-bat was Cleveland’s Earl Averill (April 16, 1929).

13 This was Mathews’ second career home run, too. In 17 seasons, he clubbed 512 home runs, two of which were hit off Wilhelm (his second in this game and his 194th, on May 10, 1957). Mathews is the only man to play for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. As of the beginning of the 2024 season, Mathews is tied with Ernie Banks, 23rd on the list of career home runs. See https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/HR_career.shtml.

14 Sheldon Jones pitched the bottom of the seventh for the Braves, retiring all three batters he faced. Jones had pitched for the Giants from 1946 to 1951 and was traded to the Braves on April 8, 1952 (with $50,000) for Bob Elliott.

15 Turkin.

16 John R. Husman, “Gene Conley,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, accessed February 2024, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/gene-conley/. Conley did not play in the NBA between 1953 and 1957, honoring a promise to the Braves organization, but afterward he did play for the Celtics and Knicks for five more seasons, finally retiring from the NBA after the 1963-64 season. The tall right-hander spent six seasons in the NBA (winning three consecutive championships with the Celtics) and 11 seasons in major-league baseball. Husman writes in Conley’s biography, “Besides pitching for the World Series champion Milwaukee Braves in 1957, he was a member of three NBA championship teams with the Boston Celtics.” 

17 Bill Chuck, “First At-Bat Home Runs,” New York Times, April 6, 2010. Found online at https://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/first-at-bat-homers/. Of Wilhelm’s 38 hits, 33 were singles. (He had the one home run, one triple, and three doubles.)