May 19, 1975: An embarrassment of riches: Triple-A Hawaii Islanders enjoy 15-run inning and perfect game

“What it was was not baseball at Derks Field Monday night,” a Salt Lake City, Utah, sportswriter summarized in May 1975, in a phrase that channeled Gertrude Stein1 while expressing more than a little annoyance.2

On the rainy night of May 19, the Hawaii Islanders and Salt Lake City Gulls of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League splashed through only five innings of the first game of a scheduled doubleheader in Salt Lake City. The results were lopsided and dramatic: Hawaii’s Gary Ross pitched a perfect game, while the Islanders sent 20 batters to the plate in a 15-run first inning – five more than Salt Lake City sent to the plate all game. Hawaii won the farcical contest, 19-0.

Salt Lake sources denigrated the game: “There was no second game. There shouldn’t have been a first one either,” Salt Lake Tribune sportswriter Ray Herbat wrote. Another account said the game “digressed into travesty,” as the two teams employed competing tactics to rush or stall the action.3 Hawaii, not surprisingly, welcomed the victory. “A win is a win and that’s all I care about,” Ross said afterward.4

The one-sided results might not suggest it, but the game brought together the Pacific Coast League’s most successful teams. Hawaii, an affiliate of the San Diego Padres, entered the game in first place in the West Division with a 19-16 record, 1½ games ahead of second-place Spokane. Salt Lake City, a California Angels affiliate, led the East Division at 22-11, 3½ games up on Albuquerque.5

The Islanders and Gulls had played a tight game the night before. Hawaii jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the top of the first, but Salt Lake City fought back to win, 4-3, on a tiebreaking single in the bottom of the eighth inning. It was Hawaii’s fifth straight defeat.6

The teams were packed with players who reached the majors7 – as well as two managers who had played in the big leagues and were on their way back up. Hawaii’s Roy Hartsfield became the first manager of the expansion Toronto Blue Jays in 1977, while Salt Lake City’s Norm Sherry managed the parent Angels in 1976 and part of 1977. In fact, Hartsfield and Sherry were managing against each other in the majors two years later, almost to the week.8

But that was still in the future on the evening of May 19, 1975. Rain, wind, and cold created an inhospitable setting for baseball, and a listed crowd of only 150 turned out for the game.9 Hawaii’s starter, 27-year-old righty Ross, had played parts of seven seasons in the major leagues. His opponent for Salt Lake City, 24-year-old Mexican lefty Sid Monge, played parts of 10 major-league seasons but hadn’t yet reached the big leagues as of May 1975. With a 5-1 record, Monge was considered his team’s ace.10

Monge faced six batters, retiring none. Sonny Jackson led off with a walk. Bill Almon, who had been the first overall pick in the June 1974 amateur draft, bunted up the third-base line. Almon was safe on a high throw to first and Jackson moved to third. A successful double steal produced the game’s first run. Jerry Turner drove in Almon with a single to center field. Dave Roberts singled; Marv Galliher11 doubled to left-center, scoring Turner. Randy Elliott’s double scored Roberts and Galliher for a 5-0 lead. Rod Gaspar’s single to center field put runners at the corners and spelled the end of Monge’s night.12

His reliever was righty Steve Blateric, who made five big-league appearances over three seasons. Blateric had pitched in two games for California in April 1975; they proved to be his final games in the majors.

Blateric walked Carmen Fanzone to load the bases, then surrendered a two-run single to Bob Davis. Jackson, who’d started the inning with a walk, singled to reload the bases. Almon singled to left to score Fanzone; Turner singled in Davis and Jackson; and Roberts singled in Almon to bring Hawaii’s lead to 11-0.

Only at this point did Salt Lake City collect its first out, as Galliher popped to second base. It halted the onslaught only briefly. Elliott walked to load the bases yet again, and a walk to Gaspar made it 12-0. Fanzone singled in Roberts and Elliott, and Davis’s single to left scored Gaspar for a 15-0 Hawaii advantage. This brought Jackson to the plate for the third time in the inning; he bounced to first baseman John Doherty, who took the play unassisted. Almon followed with a grounder to Blateric, who threw him out to bring the inning to a merciful close after 20 batters, 13 hits, and 15 runs.

Herbat’s brief account of the game in the Salt Lake Tribune dismissed the remaining 4½ innings: “The game was a joke from that point on and to chronicle too many events would be a waste of time.”13 Other newspapers didn’t detail the rest of the game’s offense either, except to note in box scores that the Islanders pushed across three more runs in the second inning and one in the fourth. Game stories noted that the Islanders’ offensive explosion did not include a home run.

Meanwhile, Ross stopped the Gulls cold – literally and figuratively.14 Relying mainly on a strong fastball, he struck out four and retired all 15 hitters he faced. The Gulls’ “offensive star” was designated hitter Dave Collins, who hit .311 in 51 games at Salt Lake that season and made his major-league debut in June. Collins was the only Gull to hit a ball to the outfield, flying out to left field in the first and fourth innings.15 Other noteworthy players in the Gulls’ lineup included third baseman and future major-league hitting coach Ron Jackson, shortstop Mike Miley, right fielder Dan Briggs, and left fielder John Balaz.

After the game, Hawaii manager Hartsfield accused Gulls players of stalling in hopes of forcing the umpires to call off the game before it became official.16 (Herbat’s game story acknowledged that “the Salt Lake players were reluctant to continue the game after the third inning.”)

Islanders players, meanwhile, were accused of swinging at and missing pitches on purpose and not running out hits to make the game go faster.17 The Islanders won the battle of gamesmanship. The umpires18 called the game after five full innings, or 1 hour and 36 minutes of frigid and reluctant gameplay.

A few individual offensive performances stood out. Turner led the Islanders with four hits in five at-bats, while ninth-place hitter Davis paced the team with five RBIs. Turner, Hawaii’s left fielder, had been blisteringly hot at the plate. In the previous nine games, he’d collected 24 hits in 36 at-bats, raising his average from .279 to .379.19 The unfortunate Blateric pitched the rest of the game for Salt Lake City, and his stat line stood out as well. In five innings he surrendered 15 hits and 13 runs, all earned.20

News accounts put the game into historic context. Ross became the third Hawaii pitcher to throw a no-hitter, following Bo Belinsky in 1968 and Dave Freisleben in 1973.21 The Islanders tied three other teams for the Pacific Coast League record for most hits in an inning, though they fell one run short of the record for most runs in an inning. The Islanders set various team records, as well.22

Salt Lake City and Hawaii remained in first place in their respective divisions at season’s end and met in the playoffs. Hawaii again came out on top, four games to two. Three of the Gulls from the May 19 lineup – Monge, Ron Jackson, and Briggs – were called up by the Angels after the end of the playoffs. Briggs made his major-league debut on September 10, while Monge and Jackson made theirs two days later.23 Members of the Islanders who saw action in San Diego later in the season included Almon, Turner, Davis, and Roberts.24

Ross went 16-8 with a 2.49 ERA for the Islanders, leading Pacific Coast League pitchers in wins.25 That earned him a return to the majors as well, but not with the Padres. On September 17 the Padres traded him to the Gulls’ parent club, the California Angels.26 Ross made one start with the 1975 Angels, on September 28. That game also involved an unusual no-hitter, but this time Ross was on the losing end as four Oakland A’s pitchers combined to no-hit the Angels.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

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 May 20, 1975, editions of the Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser published box scores.

Photo of Gary Ross 1976 California Angels photocard downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 The modernist writer Gertrude Stein, an American based in Paris, was known for obscure linguistic constructions. The phrase “What it was was not baseball” reminds the author of this story of Stein’s oft-quoted (and frequently misunderstood) description of her hometown, Oakland, California: “There is no there, there.” “Gertrude Stein,” Britannica.com, accessed January 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gertrude-Stein; Mary Helen Barrett, “Stein’s Oakland: Why There Was No There There,” Mills Quarterly (alumnae magazine of Mills College, Oakland, California), October 15, 1992. https://quarterly.mills.edu/steins-oakland-why-there-was-no-there-there/.

2 Ray Herbat, “Hawaii Nets 19-0 Win Over Gulls,” Salt Lake City Tribune, May 20, 1975: 18.

3 Brent Checketts, “This Tilt Was Melodrama, Not Baseball,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 20, 1975: 1C.

4 Herbat, “Hawaii Nets 19-0 Win Over Gulls.”

5 Pacific Coast League standings as printed in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 19, 1975: C2.

6 “Islanders Waste Hits in Fifth Straight Loss,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 19, 1975: C2.

7 Of the 31 players who appeared for the Islanders in 1975, all but two appeared in the majors at some point. (The exceptions were Marv Galliher, who played first and third base and the outfield, and Kala Kaaihue, a catcher.) Of the 38 players who appeared for the Gulls that season, 31 reached the majors.

8 The Angels and Blue Jays played a three-game series in Toronto from May 27 through 29, 1977. The Angels won two of three games in that series, with Gary Ross collecting the win on May 27. The two teams also split a two-game series June 7 and 8. California and Toronto did not meet again before the Angels fired Sherry on July 11.

9 Weather conditions from Herbat, “Hawaii Nets 19-0 Win Over Gulls,” and Checketts, “This Tilt Was Melodrama, Not Baseball.” Attendance from box scores published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser.

10 “Islanders Rain Runs, Ross Perfect,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 20, 1975: D1.

11 Galliher, the Islanders’ designated hitter, was the only member of the Hawaii starting lineup who never reached the majors. The right-handed swinger played nine professional seasons, mostly in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization. In 63 games with the 1975 Islanders, Galliher hit .306 with 2 home runs and 31 RBIs.

12 Play-by-play action from the first inning is mainly based on “First-Inning Deluge,” a blow-by-blow account of the inning in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 20, 1975: D1. Details were also taken from “Islanders Rain Runs, Ross Perfect” and “19 Runs Back Ross’s 5-Inning Perfecto,” Honolulu Advertiser, May 20, 1975: D1.

13 Herbat, “Hawaii Nets 19-0 Win Over Gulls.”

14 The Salt Lake Tribune’s Herbat quoted Gulls outfielder Dan Briggs complaining about the temperature: “We were really cold out there. They had a couple of long innings and when we came to bat we could hardly move. Their players were in the dugout and were a lot warmer.”

15 “Islanders Rain Runs, Ross Perfect.”

16 Both of the above-cited game stories from Honolulu newspapers mention the Salt Lake stalling tactics but do not detail them, with one exception. “19 Runs Back Ross’s 5-Inning Perfecto” quotes Hartsfield saying that Gulls left fielder John Balaz made only a half-hearted attempt to pursue a single by Rod Gaspar in the fourth inning.

17 Checketts, “This Tilt Was Melodrama, Not Baseball.”

18 The umpiring crew is not identified in either box scores or game accounts.

19 “19 Runs Back Ross’s 5-Inning Perfecto.”

20 Blateric also walked five, struck out three, and threw three wild pitches. Blateric compiled a 5.27 ERA in 29 games and 70 innings with Salt Lake City in 1975. Without this game, his ERA would have been 3.88.

21 “19 Runs Back Ross’s 5-Inning Perfecto”; Baseball-Reference BR Bullpen list of minor-league no-hitters by decade, accessed March 4, 2023.

22 “19 Runs Back Ross’s 5-Inning Perfecto.” The Gulls might have set team records for futility, but Salt Lake City game stories did not detail them.

23 Brent Checketts, “Islanders Erupt, Clinch Crown!” Deseret News, September 9, 1975: 1C. The Angels also called up three members of the Gulls who hadn’t played on May 19: Paul Dade, Ike Hampton, and Morris Nettles.

24 Some of these players were called up before the end of the playoffs. Davis, in particular, got the call in mid-July.

25 Incidentally, Ross was also the central figure in an improbable episode in June 1975 involving the Islanders and the Tacoma (Washington) Twins, in which Tacoma manager Cal Ermer successfully protested the ending of a game not once, but twice. For the full story, see “June 8, 1975: Triple-A Tacoma Twins Win Two Protests, but Finally Lose Game,” SABR Games Project, accessed March 4, 2023.

26 Full terms of the trade: Ross to the Angels; Bobby Valentine and Rudy Meoli to the Padres.