July 15, 1969: Williamsport, Auburn hook up in rhubarb-spiked slugfest

If the people who devise scenarios for professional wrestling matches ever got to script a baseball game, they might come up with something similar to the July 15, 1969, throwdown between the Williamsport (Pennsylvania) Astros and the Auburn (New York) Twins of the short-season Class A New York-Penn League.

Why? Because the game featured lots of drama, action, and twists and turns. There were plenty of runs (31), plenty of hits (32), a mess of errors (9), and a spate of home runs (5). An improbable eight-run comeback in the bottom of the ninth – like a wrestler rising from the mat at the last second – sent the game into extra innings. And a whole lot of bad blood resulted from three disputed calls in the 11th and final inning – so much so that police had to escort the umpires off the field after the final out.1 All that was missing was a big spangled belt for the winning Astros to hold up at the end, wrestling-style, after the 4-hour, 20-minute slugfest was finally settled.2

The New York-Penn League’s season was about one-third complete on July 15, and neither of the teams that met before 1,632 fans at Auburn’s Falcon Park had distinguished itself. Manager Billy Smith’s Astros stood in fifth place in the eight-team league, 3½ games back, with a record of 13-11. Skipper Steve Thornton’s Twins were in sixth place, 7 games off the pace, with a 9-14 record.3 Both teams were affiliated with the major-league clubs whose names they carried.

Only one player who appeared with either team that season reached the majors. That was Williamsport outfielder Jay Schlueter, who appeared in seven games with the Houston Astros in June and July 1971. With Williamsport in 1969, he batted .240 with 5 home runs in 48 games.4 Williamsport gave the starting pitching assignment to righty Nick Radakovic, a former University of Michigan player who was 3-3 with a 2.79 ERA in eight games at Williamsport that year.5 Auburn’s starter was 18-year-old rookie righty Dennis Earley, who closed the year tied for the team lead in wins, with a 7-3 record and a 5.83 ERA in 14 games.

Earley’s day ended early – though perhaps not soon enough for his liking. Williamsport piled on four runs in the first inning and another two in the third against Earley, who exited the game after three. The first-inning outburst included a pair of solo home runs by center fielder Schlueter and first baseman Larry Mansfield, a 6-foot-8 lefty swinger who led the league with 21 round-trippers that season.6 Mansfield was named the league’s player of the month for July and, at the end of the season, its rookie of the year.7

Earley was replaced by an emergency pitcher, 18-year-old left-hander Jimmy Smith. A first baseman by trade, Smith made his first professional pitching appearance to take the load off Auburn’s regular pitching staff.8 He later transitioned into full-time pitching in two seasons at Class A.9 Smith had a tough season at the plate for Auburn – hitting just .148 – and he wasn’t much better on the mound, getting knocked around for six more runs in the top of the fifth inning. That rally included Mansfield’s second home run of the game, a two-run job. After 4½ innings, the visiting Astros held a forbidding 12-0 lead. Mansfield and a few of his mates in the Williamsport starting lineup were given the rest of the night off at this point.

Auburn awoke against Radakovic in the fifth to post four runs, though he still seemed comfortably in line for the win when he exited after five innings with a 12-4 lead. Williamsport relievers yielded single runs to Auburn in the seventh and eighth, including a solo home run by catcher Danny Long. But Williamsport wasn’t done scoring: The Astros struck back with two more runs in the top of the ninth against reliever Joseph Johnson, who entered the game in the fifth and had managed to hold Williamsport off the board for several innings. Going into Auburn’s last ups, the score was 14-6.

The Astros couldn’t hold it. Five hits, two errors, a wild pitch and several walks later, Auburn had hung eight runs on the scoreboard to tie the game.10 The biggest blow was a grand slam by first baseman Mike Holbrook, whose four RBIs led all batters for the game. With the score 14-14 after Mark Scoville’s two-run single, the Twins still had runners on first and third with only one out. But rookie Astros relief pitcher Chuck Taylor, formerly of Eastern Kentucky University, closed out the resurgent Twins by eliciting a groundball to shortstop and a lineout to the right fielder. Taylor stayed in the game thereafter. All told, the ninth inning took more than an hour to complete.

The 10th inning, a calm before the storm, passed without any scoring. The bats and tempers awoke for the 11th, when Williamsport put up two runs against Auburn’s fourth pitcher, left-handed knuckleballer Gary Majdoch,11 to take a 16-14 lead. The inning saw three separate rhubarbs. The first arose from a bang-bang play at first that – if ruled an out – would have resulted in a double play and ended the inning without a run scored. However, base umpire Bill Louis ruled the runner safe, over the protests of Auburn manager Thornton.12 The Astros then collected three hits.

Another protest arose in the bottom of the inning, when plate umpire Bob Hane ejected Auburn third baseman Scoville for disputing his call on a fake bunt. Thornton again complained, to no avail. He was forced to send in an injured player, utilityman Jerry Marshall, to complete Scoville’s at-bat by taking a third strike.

The real tempest came in the bottom half, after Auburn had reclaimed one run. With two out, the score was 16-15 with runners on second and third. Holbrook hit a hard shot that rolled up Williamsport shortstop James Baasse’s arm. Baserunners Dave Schmidt and Bob Storm romped home with what appeared to be the tying and winning runs. The jubilant Twins began to celebrate a comeback win – only to have base umpire Louis rule that the ball had hit Storm between second and third base for the third out, neither run counted, and the game had ended 16-15 in Williamsport’s favor. The Twins’ celebration turned into an outburst of anger, the remaining fans joined in the heckling, and Twins officials had to summon police officers to help the umpires safely out of the ballpark.13

When the dust had settled, Taylor got the win and Majdoch took the loss. Their batterymates, Williamsport catcher Martin Cott and Auburn’s Long, each played the entire game.

It would be fun to report that this eventful game shaped the outcome of the season, but it didn’t. Williamsport finished in fourth place with a 39-36 record, 11 games behind the first-place Oneonta Yankees, while Auburn came in seventh at 31-42, 18 games back. Instead, this game is most notable as a reminder that anything can happen in an evening at the local ballpark.

 

Acknowledgments 

This article was fact-checked by Andrew Harner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo of Falcon Park: Courtesy of Kurt Blumenau.

 

Sources

In addition to the 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 Auburn (New York) Citizen-Advertiser printed a box score in its edition of July 16, 1969.

 

Notes

1 “Police Halt Rhubarb,” The Sporting News, August 2, 1969: 47.

2 The time of the game was reported in an Associated Press story published in various New York and Pennsylvania newspapers. The Lock Haven (Pennsylvania) Express ran it under the tongue-in-cheek headline “Williamsport Finesses 16-15 Win,” July 16, 1969: 20. The number of total hits and errors in the game is also taken from this story.

3 League standings as published in the Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette, July 15, 1969: 20.

4 Schlueter also played 46 games with the Peninsula Astros of the Class A Carolina League, hitting .187 there.

5 Radakovic also went 1-3 with a 4.95 ERA in four starts with the Savannah Senators of the Double-A Southern League.

6 Home runs in the game are reported as listed in a line score published in several Western New York newspapers, including the Geneva (New York) Times, July 16, 1969: 9.

7 Al Decker, “Local Astros in Final Month of ’69 Campaign,” Grit (Williamsport, Pennsylvania), August 3, 1969: Sports: 6, available at https://jvbrownpublic.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/?k=schlueter%20auburn&i=f&d=01011778-12311990&m=between&ord=k1&fn=grit_usa_pennsylvania_williamsport_19690803_english_166&df=1&dt=7&cid=2885, accessed February 2025; “Mansfield Is Top Rookie,” Grit, August 24, 1969: Sports: 1, available at https://jvbrownpublic.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/?i=f&by=1969&bdd=1960&d=05011969-09201969&e=larry%20mansfield&m=between&ord=e1&fn=grit_usa_pennsylvania_williamsport_19690824_english_165&df=1&dt=8&cid=2885, accessed February 2025.

 Mansfield went on to hit 33 homers in 120 games with Houston’s Double-A Columbus, Georgia, farm team in 1971, but batted just .221 that year and rose no higher in the minors.

8 The home runs and timing of pitching changes are based on the line score cited above. Otherwise, all game action in this story is based on Leo A. Pinckney, “Twins Then Lose in 11th on Disputed Umpire’s Call,” Auburn (New York) Citizen-Advertiser, July 16, 1969: 22.

9 In his final two professional seasons, 1972 and 1973, Smith appeared in a combined 71 games as a pitcher for Twins affiliates at Class A.

10 Pinckney, cited above, used the phrase “wild pitches” in his description of Auburn’s ninth-inning rally. However, the box score in the Auburn newspaper gives Auburn reliever Chuck Taylor only one wild pitch. (The box score is also missing the pitching line of losing pitcher Gary Majdoch.)

11 Leo A. Pinckney, “Twins Practice Disrupted by Rain,” Auburn Citizen-Advertiser, June 21, 1968: 12.

12 Pinckney’s story spells the base umpire’s name Lewis, but      the ump’s Sporting News umpire card identifies him as Bill Louis, and a Newspapers.com search found several citations for Bill Louis in New York-Penn League game stories from the period. Louis, who was Black, worked in the league in 1966 but was discharged in unclear circumstances in midseason; he returned in 1969. Sources include his Sporting News umpire card; “Queens Negro Ump Looks to 2d Major Spot,” New York Daily News, May 1, 1966: 15SB; and “Triplet Trivia,” Binghamton (New York) Press, July 30, 1966: 9.

13 According to his Sporting News umpire card, Hane worked in the Midwest League in 1970 and then left pro baseball.