July 12, 1929: A new ‘dead’ ball? Brooklyn wins after wild 9th inning

When Ebbets Field locker-room attendant Dan Comerford arrived at work on the morning of July 12, 1929, several packages were waiting for him at the clubhouse door. The five boxes – each containing a dozen new baseballs – had been sent from the office of National League President John Heydler. Seeing the parcels did not surprise Comerford, as it was his routine every morning to rub the shine off the new pearls for each game. Yet, these baseballs were different; they were experimental in design, having been directed by Heydler for trial use in the battle that afternoon between the Brooklyn Robins and the St. Louis Cardinals. For the first time in Comerford’s recollection, the balls were covered with a more rugged horsehide instead of the usual slick, glossy finish. The official reasoning from the league was that they would be easier for pitchers to grip. “Naturally, the players were curious about the new balls,” wrote Thomas Holmes of the Brooklyn Eagle of the Robins as they got into their uniforms. “Before the game they stood around while the pellets were being unwrapped. They looked at them, felt of them and still continued to wonder.”1

A better grip was not achieved, however, by one of the day’s hurlers. “Ironically enough,” Holmes wrote, “Sylvester Johnson, the St. Louis right-hander, proceeded to give the wildest exhibition any pitcher has provided at Ebbets Field this year.”2

Meanwhile, it had been a long time since Dazzy Vance, the Brooklyn ace twirling for the Robins against Johnson this afternoon, had picked up any type of baseball for a significant length of time. In making his first start in 12 days while resting a sore arm, Vance got ready to face the Cardinals with a nondescript 5-4 record. Arguably the most dominant moundsman in the National League over the preceding decade, Vance had led the circuit in strikeouts in each of the past seven seasons and was anxious to get back to work toward claiming another crown. His Robins, led by manager Wilbert Robinson, entered the day in fifth place at 34-41, a full 15 games behind the front-running Pittsburgh Pirates. The Brooklyn club was on a massive homestand which, save for a one-day trip across town to the Polo Grounds, would stretch for nearly a month from June 27 to July 21.

The Cardinals sat just ahead of Brookyln in fourth place at 39-38 under first-year manager Billy Southworth, who had appeared in his last game as a player three days earlier, on July 9. His team busted out of the gate with a 26-15 mark to open the season (including a 6-0 individual run by Johnson) but swooned in recent weeks, losing eight of 11 on their current road trip after dropping four games at Sportsman’s Park at the hands of the Chicago Cubs.

Johnson and Vance had previously locked horns in Ebbets Field two months earlier, on May 10, and the result was a 4-0 shutout for Johnson as part of a three-game sweep by the Cardinals. And when home-plate umpire Edward McLaughlin rolled one of the new baseballs out to the mound for Vance to begin play, another pitching duel started to unfold.

The game remained scoreless heading into the top of the fifth, when a barrage of hits – and a grounder that skidded through the legs of Brooklyn center fielder Johnny Frederick for an error – added up to a 2-0 Cardinals advantage. After 15 scoreless innings woven by Johnson against them in their home park, the Robins finally broke through in the bottom of the seventh, when Babe Herman lofted a long home run over the right-field fence to even the battle.

The 2-2 score held until the ninth, when an explosive final inning rarely seen in the annals of the game took flight.

After the Cardinals loaded the bases with one out, pinch-hitter Frankie Frisch was seen “hobbling up to the plate practically on one foot in nursing a lingering ankle injury,” wrote Holmes.3 Frisch, batting for Charley Gelbert, incurred the sprain in Philadelphia, the Cardinals’ last stop. Despite the immense pain, Frisch cleared the bags with his 24th double of the season after which Eddie Delker ran for him. Taylor Douthit continued the Cardinals merry-go-round with a single to score Delker while Carey Selph, starting at second base in the place of Frisch, followed with a RBI hit to plate Douthit. Johnson went into the bottom of the ninth with a 7-2 lead. Nonetheless, several of the men who contributed to the onslaught would fail the Cardinals on the defensive side.

Perhaps complacent with the newfound big lead, Johnson became “wilder than a Borneo bad man,” wrote Martin Haley of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.4 After getting Frederick to tap an easy grounder to first baseman Jim Bottomley to start the Robins’ last chance, Johnson allowed two hits and two walks – a collapse aided by interspersed errors by Douthit in center and Delker at short. Harold Haid, succeeding Johnson on the mound, walked two more men after his first hitter, Jake Flowers, also reached on a bobbled groundball by the second baseman Selph. And when Haid allowed his second free pass, unable to find the strike zone against 5-foot-9 pinch-hitter Val Picinich (batting for Vance), the tying run was forced across the plate, unearned.

Fred Frankhouse was then summoned by Southworth as the last line of defense to pitch to Frederick, batting for the second time in the inning. Frederick atoned for his error in the top half of the ninth (and his leadoff out in the bottom half) by stroking a hard single to right. Flowers crossed the plate with yet another unearned run, resulting in a stunning 8-7 triumph for Brooklyn – which had abandoned 13 men on base over the course of the afternoon.

Except for the home run by Herman (who also walked four times, leaving him with one official at-bat in the game), few hard hits were witnessed. Holmes wrote that “the [new] ball, according to some of the players, had a different sound when hit with a bat. … The question before the house is whether the balls have any less ‘rabbit’ in them than the balls previously used in the league this season.”5 Instead of an improved grip, it was speculated by Holmes and other writers covering the game (including J. Roy Stockton of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch6) that the ball had been ordered to be deadened by Heydler in response to the record number of home runs seen in Organized Baseball in the past year. With a total of 11,730 round-trippers having departed minor- and major-league ballparks in 1928,7 the reformed pill was perhaps an effort to bring the offensive game back inside the outfield walls. Haley cited other evidence from the afternoon. “Two of the doubles, one for each team, resulted when fly balls were lost in the sun, one by [Ernie] Orsatti and one by Herman.”8

Overall, Wally Gilbert led the offensive attack for the Robins with three hits and two runs scored, while on the St. Louis side, Chick Hafey ran his hitting streak to 11 games by muscling a broken-bat single to left field in the fifth inning. The loss for the Cardinals left them with a dismal 5-20 mark since June 15, and Southworth did not survive the team’s midsummer free-fall. He was fired on July 21, but would return to much greater heights as the St. Louis skipper in the 1940s.

Understandably, the Robins’ last-minute offensive heroics wound up echoing throughout an Ebbets Field that had largely emptied from hopelessness by the time Flowers scored. “A Brooklyn fan bet his casual neighbor $10 on the result of the game,” sportswriter Holmes observed. “At the end of the first half of the ninth, he paid and walked out of the park.”9

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

NOTES

1 Thomas Holmes, “Heydler’s New Consignment of Baseballs to Robins Seems Less Lively,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 13, 1929.

2 Holmes.

3 Holmes.

4 Martin Haley, “Cardinals Donate Robins 6 Runs in Ninth,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 13, 1929.

5 Holmes.

6 J. Roy Stockton, “Dodgers Overcome Five-Run Lead of Birds in 9th,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 12, 1929.

7 Stockton.

8 Haley.

9 Holmes.