July 4, 1940: Ab Wright’s bombastic Independence Day leads Millers over Saints

On the morning of July 4, 1940, the St. Paul Saints defeated the Minneapolis Millers, 3-2, in a taut pitchers’ duel. Many of the 5,869 fans in attendance walked the few blocks from St. Paul’s Lexington Park to Selby Avenue and paid 10 cents for an eight-mile streetcar ride to Nicollet Park to catch the second half of the holiday doubleheader in Minneapolis. The Saints and Millers had competed annually in split twin-city twin-bills on Decoration Day,1 Independence Day, and Labor Day since at least 1902, the season St Paul and Minneapolis became charter members of the American Association – building upon a municipal rivalry as old as the burgs themselves.

The 1940 teams were helmed by veterans of the Twin Cities baseball scene, men who’d experienced the rivalry from both sides of the river. Third-year Saints manager Babe Ganzel spent four years as a Millers infielder-outfielder (1932-35), while second-year Millers manager Tom Sheehan had pitched for the Saints from 1921 to 1923. Furthermore, Millers owner Mike Kelley built his reputation as a baseball mastermind as Saints manager between 1902 and 1923 before purchasing the Millers in 1924.

Ganzel led the Saints to a first-place American Association regular-season finish in 1938, but by July 1940 the Millers were surprisingly ascendent. During the final weeks of the 1938 season, Kelley learned he was losing both his club’s major-league partnership with the Boston Red Sox and his six-season manager Donie Bush (1932, 1934-38), because Bush and Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey had entered into an agreement to purchase the Louisville Colonels. Kelley filled the managerial vacancy in October with his former pitching ace, Sheehan, whose 31 wins in 1923 remain the American Association’s record for pitching victories in a season.

At a banquet honoring the new Millers skipper, Kelley told the assembled fans and press, “Let us be on our own next year. Let this be truly a Minneapolis ballclub, not Boston’s, not any major league team’s. Let us be able to say, ‘This is our own club.’”2 Kelley and Sheehan spent the winter assembling a roster from scratch.3

The untethered 1939 Millers shocked the Association, winning 99 games and finishing second only to the 107-win Kansas City Blues, who were the 12th best minor-league team of all time, according to historians Bill Weiss and Marshall Wright.4

On that Fourth of July afternoon in 1940, the first-place Millers welcomed the fifth-place Saints to sold-out Nicollet Park with a first-inning barrage. The 7,000 in attendance saw left fielder Bobby Estalella double in center fielder Hub Walker, who had walked to open the home half.

Then red-hot right fielder Ab Wright stepped into the batter’s box. In the series opener two days prior, he’d smacked three run-scoring singles; on July 3 he went 3-for-3 with a pair of singles and a triple. He’d begun Independence Day with a home run in the morning game and missed another by inches when his eighth-inning drive drifted just foul.

Wright was one of the first players Kelley and Sheehan signed for the 1939 season. As with Kelley, who’d managed the Millers in 1908, and Sheehan, who’d pitched for the 1931 Millers, it was a sort of homecoming for Wright, who returned to Minneapolis for his third stint with the Millers.

Wright’s professional baseball journey had begun in 1928, when he lost his amateur eligibility at the end of his freshman year at Oklahoma A&M University because he’d pitched a spring-training game for the Class B Dayton Aviators.5 He suited up for four other low-level minor-league teams from 1928 to 1930 and played one season of professional football for the NFL’s Frankford Yellow Jackets in 1930. The Millers first acquired the 6-foot-1 190-pounder in 1931, after he’d switched to outfield, but his poor fielding made him expendable and he endured another four-team tour of the lower bushes during the 1932-33 seasons.

Sportswriter Bill King later wrote of Wright, “[E]ven his admirers admit he is no great shakes as a flycatcher. … His critics charge that he bats in four runs but lets in five.”6 Still, Wright showed enough power to earn a second stint with the Millers in 1934. After he cleared the fences 29 times in 148 games, Minneapolis sold him to the Cleveland Indians for the 1935 season. He hit just two homers in 67 big-league games and was shipped back to the minors, where he bounced from Baltimore to Montreal before signing his third contract with the Millers in 1939.

Now, in his first plate appearance of the afternoon, the 33-year-old Wright tripled, scoring Estalella. First baseman Phil Weintraub followed with a two-run homer to put the Millers ahead 4-0 after just one inning. Saints starter Art Herring’s day was over, but the Millers were far from finished. Vic Frazier took over slab duty for St. Paul and kept the Minneapolis offense in check through the second inning.

St. Paul scored a run off diminutive Millers starter Mickey “Itsy-Bitsy” Haefner (5-feet-8, 160 pounds) in the top of the third when Ollie Bejma doubled in Eddie Morgan. The Millers responded quickly; Estalella walked and Wright followed with a mammoth home run to right-center field. Weintraub singled, Lin Storti doubled, and Otto Denning’s fielder’s choice plated the third Minneapolis run of the third. The Millers led, 7-1.

In the fourth, the Saints scored three runs on four singles and a walk, narrowing the gap to 7-4. But the chasm widened again in the home half: Estalella drove in a run with a fielder’s choice, Wright lined a two-run rocket over the center-field wall – his second homer of the game, third of the day – and Storti knocked a two-run circuit clout of his own to right. The tally stood at 12-4.

St. Paul’s Bobby Reis homered with the bases empty in the fifth to conclude his club’s scoring for the day. Millers Walker and Wright both took Saints reliever Tom Earley deep in the fifth inning, and there was more to come. In the seventh, Wright launched yet another towering homer to left, his fourth of the game, and Storti followed with his second. A pair of singles and a fielder’s choice in the eighth produced the 17th Minneapolis run of the day. Estalella grounded out for the final Millers out of the game with Wright standing in the on-deck circle. Haefner went the distance, allowing nine hits in nine innings, for his fourth straight win.

Mighty Ab’s line went into the books: 5-for-5, four home runs, a triple, seven RBIs, and five runs scored. Although Nicollet Park was a noted launching pad,7 none of Wright’s home runs traveled over the short right-field porch (260 feet) and none were of the fence-scraping variety. Minneapolis Star sports editor Charles Johnson wrote that the center-field shot was the longest hit he’d ever seen at Nicollet.8

Still dripping from his postgame shower, Wright told reporters, “Well, maybe I’d have hit FIVE home runs but, you see, I cracked my best bat at Lexington this morning and I had to get used to a new one, my number-2 bat. Or maybe breaking that GOOD bat made me mad, I dunno. I’d like to have come up that sixth time. I’d like to get another crack at that ball.”9

Wright’s four home runs equaled Dale Alexander’s American Association single-game record, set in June 1935. Wright also become the first batter in the minor or major leagues to record four home runs and a triple in one game. His 19 total bases broke Alexander’s Association mark by three. Wright collected 39 home runs and 159 RBIs and batted .369 in 1940, good enough for the Association Triple Crown. Minneapolis finished third in the league in 1940, losing a playoff series to Kansas City. St. Paul came in fifth.

Wright became a fan favorite during his third stint with the Millers. But on September 1, 1942, a Kansas City Blues fan hurled an empty pop bottle from the stands in retaliation for an earlier incident in which Wright had flung his bat at a Blues pitcher who’d hit him with a pitch. The pop bottle struck Wright just above his left eye.10

The injury ended Wright’s season and the concussion’s effects prevented him from any exertion throughout the winter of 1943. When the slugger informed Kelley by letter that he was retiring from baseball, the Millers boss encouraged him to take more time and reconsider the decision. By the end of April 1943, Wright’s condition had improved, and he rejoined the Millers. 

Sheehan signed on with the Boston Braves as the pitching coach for 1944. Frustrated by the team’s lack of punch – and the lack of trade options with other talent-depleted teams due to World War II – Sheehan persuaded the Braves brass to purchase Wright from the Millers. In his second chance in the big leagues, Wright slugged seven homers in 71 games and finished with a .736 OPS and 0.3 WAR. Wright closed out his career with four more minor league stops: Baltimore and Buffalo in 1945, and Oklahoma City and Muskogee in 1946.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Ab Wright, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, David Anderson, ed., Before the Dome: Baseball in Minnesota When the Grass Was Real (Minneapolis: Nodin Press), 1993, Stew Thornley, On to Nicollet: The Glory and Fame of the Minneapolis Millers (Minneapolis: Nodin Press), 1988, and Stew Thornley, Baseball in Minnesota: The Definitive History (St. Paul: Minneapolis Historical Society Press), 2006.

Notes

1 Decoration Day was first observed on May 30, 1868, and was originally intended to encourage decorating Civil War soldiers’ graves with flowers. The name of the holiday was officially changed to Memorial Day in 1971. It has become a day to honor all members of the US military who fought and died in service to the nation.

2 Dick Hackenberg, “$50,000 Miller Talent Hunt,” Minneapolis Star, October 12, 1938: 25.

3 The Millers remained unaffiliated until 1946, when Horace Stoneham and the New York Giants purchased the club from Kelley. Stoneham then hired Sheehan to manage the Millers again, replacing Rosy Ryan, who had replaced Zeke Bonura just days before. In 1960 Stoneham replaced San Francisco Giants manager Bill Rigney with Sheehan.

4 Bill Weiss and Marshall Wright, The 100 Greatest Minor League Baseball Teams of the 20th Century (Parker, Colorado: Outskirts Press, 2006), 362-369; BR Bullpen, “100 Best Minor League Baseball Teams,” Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-Reference.com/bullpen/100_Best_Minor_League_Baseball_Teams. Accessed August 2024.

5 “Star Athlete Lost to Oklahoma A&M,” Hutchinson (Kansas) News, August 25, 1928: 2.

6 Bill King (United Press), “New England Sports,” North Adams (Massachusetts) Transcript, June 16, 1944: 8.

7 Five Millers finished among the top six American Association home-run hitters in 1940. Wright led the circuit with 39, Estalella was second with 32 (he also led the AA with 147 runs scored), Weintraub hit 27, Walker 25, Storti 20). Weintraub was the only left-handed batter in the group – the two biggest home-run seasons of his career were the two he spent with the Millers. (He hit 33 homers in 1939.)

8 Charles Johnson. “Charles Johnson’s Lowdown on Sport,” Minneapolis Star Journal, July 5, 1940: 26.

9 Dick Hackenberg, “Wright Cracks 46-year Mark,” Minneapolis Star Journal, July 5, 1940: 25.

10 Although the fan was apprehended and charged with disorderly conduct, he failed to appear in municipal court. No bench warrant was issued, as he was a resident of Kansas and the court proceedings were in Missouri. The assailant forfeited a $25 bond.