July 1, 1966: Pirates rookie Woodie Fryman faces only 27 batters in 1-hit shutout of Mets

The 1966 Pittsburgh Pirates, featuring Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski, Willie Stargell (having his first big season), and batting champion Matty Alou, topped the National League as late as September 10 before fading to third place, just three games behind the repeat champion Los Angeles Dodgers. At the end of June Pittsburgh (43-29) trailed only the San Francisco Giants (48-28) in the pennant race, and on July 1 the surging Pirates won their sixth game in a row as 26-year-old rookie Woodie Fryman faced the minimum 27 batters, firing a one-hitter. Pittsburgh pounded the New York Mets at Shea Stadium, 12-0.

Fryman’s pitching performance was unexpected and all the more intriguing because of his background: One year earlier Fryman had been playing amateur baseball in Kentucky. In 1960 Fryman had turned down Pittsburgh’s offer of a minor-league contract with a $5,000 signing bonus; he insisted on a $20,000 bonus, a request the Pirates refused to meet.

Fryman also flirted with other teams in 1960; they too showed interest in the young left-hander, but would not meet his demands. “The best they offered me was $300 per month,” said Fryman, “I was making more than that at home.”1 Fryman remained on the family tobacco farm and continued to pitch against local competition.

But circumstances changed,2 and at the urging of his father, in 1965 Fryman contacted Jim Maxwell, the Pirates scout who first attempted to sign him.3 Fryman, now 25 years old, worked out for the Pirates in July, signed on the spot, and was assigned to Batavia (New York) of the Class A New York-Penn League. He struck out 45 batters in 30 innings before being promoted to Triple-A Columbus (International League), where he struck out 29 more in 34 innings. Fryman performed well at both stops, but perhaps just as importantly, Fryman threw three scoreless innings against the Cleveland Indians in a benefit exhibition game at Forbes Field.

Fryman remained on the Columbus roster to begin 1966, but he received an invitation to spring training with the Pirates as one of several candidates to become the team’s left-handed reliever. Fryman got the job. Les Biederman reported in The Sporting News that Fryman made Pittsburgh’s 1966 Opening Day roster because “[h]e threw strikes and he could get the ball over the plate with something on it.”4

Fryman’s first seven appearances for the Pirates were out of the bullpen. In 9⅓ innings he struck out eight, walked two, and was credited with a win. It was not until May 13 that Fryman started a contest; he tossed a complete game, beating Claude Osteen and the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-3. Fryman remained a starter, and when he faced the Mets on July 1 his record was 5-3. Most recently – June 26 on the road against the Philadelphia Phillies – Fryman had thrown his first major-league shutout, winning 2-0 on a three-hitter.

Fryman’s mound opponent in this Friday night game – the first of Pittsburgh’s three games in New York – was right-hander Jack Fisher, who carried a 5-7 record into the fray. The Pirates had pinned a loss on Fisher on May 1in Pittsburgh, knocking him from the game in the fifth. At age 27 Fisher was a well-traveled veteran, having pitched for Baltimore (1959-62) and San Francisco (1963) before coming to the Mets in 1964. Surrendering Roger Maris’s 60th home run in 1961 and leading the NL with 24 losses in 1965 gave Fisher unwanted notoriety.  

Fisher had a great first inning; the game’s beginning did not hint at its lopsided final score. Fisher threw out Alou at first, then he struck out Gene Alley and Clemente. He needed to remain sharp to win, since the Mets’ batting order lacked firepower. Five of the starters carried batting averages below .215 (Billy Murphy .214; Eddie Bressoud .213; Ron Swoboda .196; Roy McMillan .163; Fisher .074), and Cleon Jones, the cleanup hitter, had only three home runs halfway through the season. Using twenty-first century metrics, the Mets had the worst offense in the league; Pittsburgh the best.5 

The first Mets hitter was Ron Hunt, who in 1964 had the privilege of being the Mets’ first All-Star Game starter. Hunt stepped into the batter’s box against Fryman with a .286 batting average and a .369 on-base percentage. He had slapped two singles and stolen a base in New York’s 1-0 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies a day earlier.

Hunt bounced a ball over the mound and toward second base. Shortstop Alley took a few steps to his left, trying to scoop the ball just behind the bag, but it took an odd hop and skidded off his glove. Without hesitation official scorer Barney Kremenko, a sportswriter for the New York Journal American, called it a hit. Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News summarized things: “It went for a scratch single but a legitimate one. It could not be scored otherwise.”6

No one in the crowd of 24,056 could have known that Hunt’s scratch first-inning single would become the most talked about play of the game, overshadowing four Pittsburgh home runs. Nevertheless, the fans “booed a little when the hit sign went up.”7

With Hunt at first, Fryman went back to work and struck out Bressoud, his first of eight strikeouts. That brought to the plate longtime St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Ken Boyer. Now 35 years old, Boyer was in his first season with the Mets and batting .272 with 5 home runs.

With Boyer at the plate, Hunt broke for second, and was thrown out, Jim Pagliaroni to Mazeroski. Boyer grounded out to José Pagan, so despite Hunt’s hit, Fryman had faced the minimum three batters in the inning. The Mets did not have another baserunner; Fryman retired New York one-two-three in the second through ninth innings.

Pittsburgh struck for its first run in the second on Mazeroski’s bases-loaded single. Two runs were added in the third inning when Pagan hit the Pirates’ first home run, with Alley on board, making it 3-0.

Fisher was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the inning. Bill Hepler, in his only big-league season, held Pittsburgh off the scoreboard in the fourth, fifth, and sixth.

Meanwhile Fryman kept retiring the Mets on routine fielding chances or strikeouts. In the fifth the Mets made things a little interesting: Mazeroski leapt high to catch a hard liner off Jones’s bat, and he stopped Murphy’s hard bouncer with his chest before throwing him out. The inning ended when Pagan made a backhanded stop of Swoboda’s grounder “that had base hit written on it”8 and threw him out. Fryman teased Mazeroski at the end of the inning, warning him not to get hurt.9

Pittsburgh finally got to Hepler in the seventh, unleashing its offense with a burst of six runs. The attack included five singles (two by Alou), a double, and the second home run of the game, this time by Mazeroski. Hepler was charged with four of the runs, and, his replacement, Darrell Sutherland, with two.

Larry Bearnarth finished the game for the Mets. In the eighth he gave up a solo home run by Stargell to center field and a two-run shot to right field by Donn Clendenon, bringing the score to 12-0. Clendenon clubbed a double, triple, and home run in the game.

For Fryman, the ninth inning was much like the others. He retired the Mets on a fly ball to left, a popup, and a grounder, reaching 26 consecutive batters retired. When the game went into the books as a one-hitter, some Pirates – including Alley – thought the scorer might change his mind10 and score Hunt’s ball an error.

Fryman was not among the complainers, stating after the game, “If it had been hit harder, I thought he might have been thrown out. But it was hit so slow that it had to go as a base hit.”11 He added, “I thought it was a hit at the time, and I still do.”12 

Kremenko was not going to change his call no matter how much the Pirates pleaded for mercy. “I do not operate that way,” said the official scorer. “A hit’s a hit and an error’s an error, and no changes.”13

It took Fryman exactly 100 pitches to dispatch New York; he pitched ahead in the count all through the game, and only twice reached a 3-and-2 count.14 Mets manager Wes Westrum had never seen Fryman pitch before, and came away impressed. “He’s as fast as any left-hander I’ve seen all year,” said the Mets skipper, “and he throws strikes.”15

In consecutive shutouts Fryman had thrown 18 innings, faced 59 hitters, and given up four hits and no walks. He was not done yet! Fryman topped the Cubs 6-0 in his next start, for a third consecutive shutout.

If there was any consolation for the Mets and their fans, it was found in the NL standings. For the first time in their five-season existence, they were not in 10th place on July 1. Despite this thumping, New York (29-42) was seven games ahead of the Chicago Cubs and lodged firmly in ninth.  

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for play-by-play and statistical information. The author relied on game coverage in the Pittsburgh Press, New York Post, New York Daily News, and Newsday, and reviewed SABR BioProject biographies for several players participating in the game.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1966/B07010NYN1966.htm

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196607010.shtml

Notes

1 Les Biederman, “Farmer Fryman Plants Buc Flag Seed,” The Sporting News, August 6, 1966: 3. The article mentions the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox. Fryman’s SABR biography mentions other teams as well.

2 The government reduced tobacco subsidies, and Fryman was growing older and wondering whether he could pitch in the major leagues. Biederman.  

3 Fryman lied about his age to the Pirates, slicing off three years and claiming to be 22 rather than 25. All the 1966 reports about his one-hitter referred to Fryman as a 23-year-old rookie.

4 Biederman, “Farmer Fryman Plants Buc Flag Seed.”

5 New York’s OPS+ of 81 was last in the NL in 1966; Pittsburgh’s 109 first.

6 Joe Trimble, “Fryman Sizzles Mets, 12-0, With 1-Hitter; Bucs Rap 18,” New York Daily News, July 2, 1966: 318.

7 Paul Zimmerman, “The Shea Scorer: ‘A Hit’s a Hit,’” New York Post, July 2, 1966: 62.

8 Biederman, “Fryman Near Perfect Beating Mets,” Pittsburgh Press, July 2, 1966: 6.

9 Biederman. “Fryman Near Perfect Beating Mets.”

10 Les Biederman, “Woodie Faced a Mere 27 Batters in Throttling Mets on a Lone Hit,” The Sporting News, August 6, 1966: 3.

11 Zimmerman.

12 Biederman, “Fryman Near Perfect Beating Mets.”

13 Zimmerman.

14 Bob Rubin, “Ol’ Woody Mows Down the Mets,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), July 2, 1966: 29.

15 Biederman, “Fryman Near Perfect Beating Mets.”