July 1, 1982: Big bopper, fleet feet carry Rochester over Syracuse

Some days home-run power makes the difference in a baseball game. Other days speed wins games. Every so often, a team lucks into both at once, and the outcome is (usually) a dominant win.

The Rochester Red Wings of the Triple-A International League benefited from bursts of both power and speed on July 1, 1982. First baseman Dan Logan whacked a grand slam, while fleet-footed center fielder John “T-Bone” Shelby turned a weak groundball and two errors into a two-run Little League home run.1 When the last out gave way to a fireworks display, the result was an 8-4 Rochester win over the Red Wings’ rivals to the east, the Syracuse Chiefs.

The start of the day found Rochester, a Baltimore Orioles affiliate, in fourth place with a 37-34 record, 2½ games out of first. Syracuse, a Toronto Blue Jays farm team, sat in sixth place in the eight-team IL with a 33-38 record, 5½ games back. The teams held the same positions at the end of the season.2

Rochester and Syracuse had split games on June 29 and 30. Syracuse won the first game 4-1, while Rochester took the second, 8-7. The hero the previous night had been Logan, a 6-foot-7 lefty swinger, who was the Orioles’ second-round draft choice in the June 1977 amateur draft from the University of West Georgia.3 Logan won the game in the ninth inning with his 13th homer of the season.4 He’d hit 23 round-trippers for the 1981 Red Wings and had started at first base for them during the longest game in professional baseball history, a 33-inning marathon against the Pawtucket Red Sox that began on April 18 and ended in June after an early-morning suspension.

Both teams’ lineups mixed players who were on their way up with veterans on their way out. Rochester’s up-and-comers included Shelby, left fielder Mike Young, and Glenn Gulliver, who was called up about two weeks later5 as the latest in a string of players to fill Baltimore’s chronic vacancy at third base in the years after Brooks Robinson retired. Syracuse’s rising stars included 20-year-old shortstop Tony Fernández and center fielder Mitch Webster.

The veterans included Rochester catcher Dan Graham, who had a meteoric run of success with the 1980 Orioles that he was never able to repeat,6 and Syracuse first baseman Doug Ault. Ault had been a home-run hero of the very first Blue Jays game on April 7, 1977, but hadn’t appeared in the big leagues since 1980; he’d spent the previous season playing in Japan.7

Rochester manager Lance Nichols tapped Allan Ramírez, a 25-year-old righty from Texas, to start on the mound. Ramírez had posted a sterling 16-8 record at Double-A Charlotte in 1980, then scuffled at several minor-league stops the following season. He entered the game with a 4-5 record and had not yet reached the major leagues; he got there for 11 games with Baltimore in 1983, his only big-league action.

Syracuse manager Jim Beauchamp gave the start to 21-year-old righty Mark Eichhorn, with a 4-6 record. Eichhorn, in his fourth pro season, reached Toronto for seven starts at the end of 1982. He then bounced back to the minors for three more seasons before re-emerging as a reliable major-league reliever through the mid-1990s.

The first four innings passed without a run on either side, though neither pitcher could be called dominant. Both starters walked six batters – Eichhorn over five innings, Ramírez in 6⅓.

Eichhorn’s walks set the table for Logan’s heroics in the fifth. Rochester shortstop Rick Jones led off with a single and moved to second on Shelby’s bunt. Gulliver and Young had good batting eyes: They placed third and fourth in the IL that season with 90 and 82 walks respectively.8 Both drew free passes to load the bases. Logan cleared the bags with his second grand slam and 14th homer of 1982, giving Rochester a 4-0 lead.9

Another veteran, 34-year-old Syracuse designated hitter Glenn Adams, started a rally in the top of the sixth. Adams, who had spent parts of seven seasons in the major leagues,10 hit a single and right fielder Charlie Beamon Jr. did the same. Catcher Geno Petralli drove in Adams and Beamon with a two-out double, and second baseman Bob Nandin’s single scored Petralli to cut Rochester’s lead to 4-3. Nandin had been summoned from Class A Kinston earlier in the week to replace Fred Manrique, who suffered a broken knuckle while fielding a ball during an exhibition game against the parent Blue Jays.11

Lefty reliever Rick O’Keeffe took the mound in the bottom of the inning. He’d been a first-round pick of the Milwaukee Brewers in the June 1975 amateur draft out of high school in New York state. O’Keeffe gave up 74 hits and 27 walks in 50⅔ innings with Syracuse in 1982 – but neither hits nor walks were the biggest story of the inning.

Jones again led off with a walk, and Shelby followed by chopping a swinging bunt toward third base.12 Rushing to catch Shelby at first, Chiefs third baseman Dave Baker threw wildly. The ball rolled into right field, allowing Jones to score.

Shelby kept moving to second, then third, as right fielder Beamon tracked down the ball and threw home. No one was covering home plate, however, and Shelby strolled in to complete his trip around the bases. “I don’t know where all their infielders went,” Shelby said after the game. “Everyone just disappeared.”13 Gulliver, who followed Shelby, reached base on another walk and came around to score, making the Red Wings’ lead 7-3.14

The Chiefs got a run back in the top of the seventh, chasing Ramírez with one out. Righty reliever Nate Snell, 29 years old and two seasons away from his big-league debut, allowed an inherited runner to score as Beamon’s groundout brought home left fielder Creighton Tevlin. After that, Snell pitched shutout ball for the rest of the game.15

Veteran Syracuse righty John Verhoeven, who replaced O’Keeffe, gave back a final Rochester run in the bottom of the seventh to make the score 8-4. The game ended in 3 hours and 7 minutes, with Ramírez earning the win, Eichhorn taking the loss, and Snell picking up his fourth save of the season. The 7,781 fans in attendance at Rochester’s Silver Stadium then enjoyed the fireworks.

Rochester’s heroes of July 1, 1982, followed very different career paths. Shelby spent short stints in Baltimore in 1981 and 1982 before gaining a full-time foothold in the majors. His 11-season big-league career included World Series championships with the 1983 Orioles and 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers. He also spent 16 years as a major-league coach with four teams.

Logan, on the other hand, found his path blocked by future Hall of Famer Eddie Murray, then in the prime of his career with the Orioles. After hitting 19 homers for the 1982 Red Wings and 11 more in 1983, Logan retired from the game and returned to his Georgia hometown, where he coached basketball and football at his former high school.16

Author’s note and acknowledgments

The author grew up in Rochester watching the Red Wings, and this is the earliest professional baseball game he can remember attending. The author thanks the Onondaga County Public Library of Syracuse, New York, for research assistance.

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

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

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the July 2, 1982, edition of the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle published a box score.

Photo of 1982 TCMA Rochester Red Wings card #15 downloaded from the Trading Card Database. Photo of ticket stub from author’s collection.

Notes

1 A “Little League home run” occurs when a batter scores during their plate appearance as the result of one or more errors by the fielding team. The term evokes the sloppy fielding that is frequently displayed by young ballplayers.

2 International League standings as printed in the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, July 1, 1982: 2D. As of July 1, a mere 3 percentage points separated the first-place Columbus Clippers, a New York Yankees affiliate, from the second-place Tidewater Tides, a New York Mets farm team. By season’s end, the Richmond Braves had overtaken both teams to finish in first.

3 As of February 2023, only four former University of West Georgia athletes had reached the big leagues – outfielder Cade Marlowe, pitcher Rick Camp, infielder Barry Evans, and Logan’s Rochester teammate Rick Jones.

4 John Kolomic, “Logan’s Fireworks Spark Wings,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 2, 1982: 1D.

5 Gulliver made his major-league debut on July 17.

6 Graham hit .278 with 15 home runs in just 86 games with Baltimore in 1980. The next season he sagged to .176 in 55 games. Graham did not appear in the majors again; 1982 was his final professional season.

7 Ault’s SABR Biography Project article, written by David E. Skelton, indicates that the Blue Jays signed Ault as a player-coach for Syracuse in 1982. Ault succeeded Jim Beauchamp as manager of the Chiefs in 1985, staying for three seasons.

8 Gulliver’s 90 walks were particularly remarkable, as he played only 85 games and had 363 plate appearances. The league leader in walks, Paul Runge of Richmond, drew 95 bases on balls in 134 games and 610 plate appearances.

9 “Chiefs Lose Final in ‘Thruway Series,’” Syracuse (New York) Post-Standard, July 2, 1982: C1.

10 Adams played 30 games with Toronto in 1982. It was his final season in the majors.

11 “Chiefs Lose Final in ‘Thruway Series.’”

12 The Rochester newspaper referred to Shelby as “chopping a bunt,” while the Syracuse paper referred to it as a “slow ground ball.”

13 Kolomic, “Logan’s Fireworks Spark Wings;” “Chiefs Lose Final in ‘Thruway Series.’”

14 Syracuse and Rochester news accounts mention Gulliver scoring a run but do not specify how. It can be extrapolated from the box score that he reached on a walk. The box score does not credit him with a hit; he was not hit by a pitch; and the only errors of the game were made by Baker and Beamon on Shelby’s Little League home run.

15 Kolomic, “Logan’s Fireworks Spark Wings;” “Chiefs Lose Final in ‘Thruway Series.’” Kolomic specifies that Ramírez left the game with a 7-3 lead. In the box score, Ramírez is charged with four runs (all earned) and Snell with none.

16 Greg Boeck, “This ‘Pearl’ Shows Luster at Box Office,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, November 6, 1983: 1E.