May 18, 1957: Willie Mays steals four bases, homers against Cincinnati

Always capable of doing the spectacular, Willie Mays stole four bases and hit a home run against the Cincinnati Redlegs on May 18, 1957. The New York Giants won, 6-3, before a ladies day crowd of 8,538 at Crosley Field.

The Giants began the day in sixth place with a record of 12-17. Cincinnati was 19-8 and atop the National League, 1½ games ahead of the second-place Milwaukee Braves. This was the finale of a three-game series, and the Redlegs were looking for a sweep. They won the opener, 3-2, and the follow-up, 11-1.

(This was fourth straight season that the Cincinnati club used the Redlegs designation as a way to distance itself from any association with communism, derided by many as the Red Menace. The team went back to being the Reds in 1959.)

Of note, Cincinnati catcher Ed Bailey threw out Mays once in each of the first two games trying to steal. Maybe the Say Hey Kid had some incentive to get the best of Bailey this time.

Ruben Gomez, a 29-year-old right-hander from Puerto Rico, started on the mound for New York. Joe Nuxhall, a 28-year-old lefty from nearby Hamilton, Ohio, who made his big-league debut at the tender age of 15 in wartime 1944, took the ball for Cincinnati.

Mays entered the action with a .304 batting average and got off to a running start. He came up to bat with two out in the first inning and singled to right field. With Hank Sauer at bat, Mays stole second base and then third. The Giants, though, could not take advantage of their superstar’s speed. Sauer walked, but Ray Katt struck out to end the threat.

The Giants broke out on top with a solo run in the top of the second inning. Daryl Spencer and Foster Castleman led off with consecutive singles. Dusty Rhodes hit into a force out that scored Spencer. Gomez singled but was forced out when he went into second base standing on Red Schoendienst’s groundball. Nuxhall hit Whitey Lockman with a pitch, but Mays flied out to center field. “The failure of Gomez to slide into second prevented the Giants from racking up two or three more runs,” Lou Smith of the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote.1

The Redlegs took a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the second and scored their first run the same way the Giants did. Frank Robinson, who had a .376 batting average, and George Crowe began the rally with base hits. Smoky Burgess hit into a force out that scored Robinson. After Don Hoak popped out, Roy McMillan knocked a triple to center field that brought home the not-so-speedy Burgess. Nuxhall grounded out to end the inning.

Mays had nearly turned McMillan’s triple into an out. He “had the ball all the way,” according to New York Daily News sportswriter Jim McCulley. As the great defender backed up near the Crosley Field wall, he fell down. According to McCulley, “Mays tried to make the catch while lying flat on his back, but the ball bounced out of his glove.”2 Lou Smith insisted, “Mays almost contributed the circus catch of the season.”3

New York took the lead in the fourth. Rhodes singled and advanced to second base on Gomez’s sacrifice. That brought Schoendienst up to bat. The Giants had acquired the nine-time All-Star infielder from the St. Louis Cardinals on June 14, 1956, in an eight-player deal.4 Upon hearing about the trade, the Germantown, Illinois, native said simply, “That’s the way the ball bounces, I guess.”5 St. Louis Globe-Democrat columnist Robert L. Burnes wrote, “We’re going to miss him and if that’s the wrong attitude, it’s just too doggone bad.”6

Schoendienst entered this game with a .310 batting average and singled in his third at-bat. The ball scooted through Nuxhall’s legs, allowing Rhodes to score. Nuxhall kicked himself for not making the play. “It went right through my legs,” he said. “I flinched thinking it was hit harder than it actually was. And it got by me. That was a double-play ball and instead of being out of the inning, they get three runs.”7

Lockman’s groundball forced Schoendienst right before Mays slammed a “Ruthian”8 two-run homer deep into the right-center-field seats. It was his fourth homer of the season but his first since April 22, and it gave New York a 4-2 lead. The round-tripper also ended Nuxhall’s afternoon. Reliever Art Fowler, who served as pitching coach for several big-league teams after his playing career ended in 1964, struck out Sauer to end the inning.

Neither team scored again until Crowe hit a solo homer off Gomez with one out in the seventh. The Giants answered with a run in the top of the eighth. Schoendienst drove home his second run of the day with a two-out single that brought home Castleman, who had begun the inning with a double to left.

The final run came across in the ninth. Mays led off with a single. Once again with Sauer at the plate, the “mercury-footed”9 Mays took off for second. Safe, he next ran to third for his fourth stolen base of the day and 14th of the season. (This was the second and only other time in Mays’ career that he swiped four bases in a game. He also performed the feat on May 6, 1956, against the St. Louis Cardinals on his 25th birthday. However, he did not hit a home run in that one.) Sauer popped out, though, and Katt hit a lazy fly ball to center field. Mays scored when Spencer doubled to left.

Gomez pitched a scoreless ninth to seal the victory and run his won-lost record to 6-1. He was the first pitcher in baseball to reach that mark and now had nearly half of New York’s 13 victories. The fifth-year veteran also boasted a 2.30 ERA. The previous season, Gomez was just 7-17 with a 4.58 ERA.

In his game story, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Smith heaped praise on Gomez. “If one has to lose,” he wrote, “there always is some comfort in having the job done by an expert.”10 Reds manager Birdie Tebbetts confirmed, “He didn’t give us many chances.”11

Nuxhall, the losing pitcher, dropped to 1-1 with a 6.00 ERA. Unlike Gomez’s strong effort, Smith commented, “the Redleg pitching left much to be desired.”12 The Giants nearly broke open the game a few times. Smith wrote, “Sloppy baserunning, especially in the second frame kept the Giants from racking up more runs.”13 New York put at least one runner on base in every inning except the seventh.

Lou Smith called Mays “the Giants’ demon of speed.” He told his readers that Mays and Bailey were engaged in a “feud” of sorts. Bailey explained: “When he steals one on me, he pops off. When I throw him out, I pop off.”14

The Reds, despite their impressive start, finished the season in fourth place with an 80-74 mark. Robinson led Cincy with a .322 batting average and a .529 slugging percentage. George Crowe topped the club with 31 homers and 92 RBIs.

For the Giants, Mays batted a team-high .333 and led the league with 38 steals. He hit 35 home runs and 26 doubles and also topped the circuit with 20 triples and a .626 slugging percentage. Only three other National League or American League players in the twentieth century had ever reached at least 20 doubles, triples, and home runs in the same season.

The Giants finished 69-85 in their final year in New York. They slipped into sixth place on May 3 and never left that lowly position.

The NL’s two New York-based teams left for California in 1958, the Giants to San Francisco and the Dodgers to Los Angeles. Giants owner Horace Stoneham waited until July 18 to make his decision, but Mays biographer James H. Hirsch wrote that “by spring training, Stoneham had already decided to move the team.”15

Attendance at the Polo Grounds, once robust, had dwindled. The ballclub that drew 1,600,793 in 1947 attracted just 653,923 fans in the lame-duck season of 1957, actually an improvement over the previous year (629,179). Lockman said that “playing before crowds of twelve hundred was like walking through a morgue.”16

In addition, several Giants lost faith in manager Bill Rigney. By late summer, according to Hirsch, “his team had quit on him.” Mays and the skipper, though, had patched up some of their differences from the previous season when they clashed several times. In 1957, Hirsch wrote, “Mays didn’t quit, and for that reason alone 1957 may have been his finest year.”17

SOURCES

Besides the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CIN/CIN195705180.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1957/B05180CIN1957.htm

NOTES

1  Lou Smith, “Giants’ Gomez Tames Reds’ Power,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 19, 1957: 57.

2  Jim McCulley, “Giants Leading Redlegs; Gomez Faces Nuxhall,” New York Daily News, May 19, 1957: 56.

3  Lou Smith, “Pirates ‘Debut’ at Crosley Field in Double Bill,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 19, 1957: 57.

4  The Cardinals later sent Bob Stephenson and Gordon Jones to the Cardinals to complete the deal and make this a 10-player transaction.

5  Robert L. Burnes, “Schoendienst Traded to Giants in 8-Player Deal,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 15, 1956: 27.

6  Robert L. Burnes, “The Benchwarmer,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 15, 1956: 27.

7  Bill Ford, “Didn’t Get a Chance to Get to Ruben,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 19, 1957: 57.

8  Smith, “Giants’ Gomez Tames Reds’ Power.”

9  Smith, “Giants’ Gomez Tames Reds’ Power.”

10 Smith, “Giants’ Gomez Tames Reds’ Power.”

11 Ford, “Didn’t Get a Chance to Get to Ruben.”

12 Smith, “Giants’ Gomez Tames Reds’ Power.”

13 Smith, “Giants’ Gomez Tames Reds’ Power.”

14 Smith, “Pirates ‘Debut’ at Crosley Field in Double Bill.”

15 James S. Hirsch, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend (New York: Scribner, 2010), 260.

16 Hirsch, 257.

17 Hirsch, 257.