May 20, 1951: Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn lead Phillies to doubleheader sweep of Pirates

Entering their May 20 doubleheader with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the 1951 Philadelphia Phillies had experienced a rough stretch. From April 27 through May 18, the defending National League pennant-winners had lost 14 of 21 games.

And though the Phillies won the first game of the doubleheader at Forbes Field, 17-0, the most runs they had scored in a game in nearly 10 years,1 they had been in a slump since staff ace Robin Roberts’ April 26 shutout of the Brooklyn Dodgers, which was the last time the Phillies had occupied first place. Roberts’ 2-0 blanking of the Dodgers was the team’s lone shutout until Russ Meyer’s shutout in this day’s opener.

In the second game of the May 20 doubleheader, Roberts, 3-3 and pitching on two days’ rest, started for the Phillies. His most recent outing had been a hard-luck loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, when he allowed two runs – one earned – in six innings but lost, 2-1.

He was a workhorse on the mound, “[n]ever missing a start in the 1950s,” according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.2

“I don’t think anyone was ever able to concentrate in a baseball game any better than I was,” Roberts said. “I stood out there in total isolation, just throwing that ball as well as I could. Nothing bothered me.”3

Roberts, one of the few college-educated major leaguers of the time, joined the Phillies in June 1948 after starring in basketball and baseball at Michigan State University. In 1950, when the “Whiz Kid” Phillies won the NL pennant, Roberts was an All-Star for the first of seven straight seasons and a 20-game winner for the first of six seasons in a row.

Opposing Roberts was Erv Dusak. Traded by the Cardinals to the Pirates just three days earlier on May 17, along with Rocky Nelson, for shortstop Stan Rojek, the 30-year-old Dusak was making his first start of the 1951 season and the third in his major-league career.

He had spent most of his professional career as an infielder or outfielder, reaching the majors in 1941 as a promising minor-league power hitter, appearing in a handful of big-league games in 1941 and 1942, and then spending the next three seasons in the US Army during World War II. Dusak was a Cardinals utilityman from 1946 through 1948 – starting in left field in Games Two and Six of the 1946 World Series – but he took up pitching late in the 1948 season.

After spending almost all of 1949 on the mound for the International League’s Rochester Red Wings, Dusak had returned to the Cardinals’ major-league roster in 1950, and 19 of his 28 appearances since then had been as a pitcher.

In the May 20 nightcap, aside from Roberts on the mound instead of Meyer, the Phillies’ lineup matched the one that began the opener, except for one change. Willie Jones, who exited the first game after the first inning, remained sidelined because of “a badly sprained big toe of his right foot.”4 Eddie Pellagrini had come off the bench and contributed two hits, two runs, and an RBI in the opener, and he was again at third base.

In the first, the Phillies resumed their assault on Pirates pitching. Eddie Waitkus led off with a walk and Richie Ashburn singled. Dick Sisler, batting .350, doubled off the wall in right to score Waitkus and Ashburn and extend his hitting streak to 12 games.5

The visitors upped their lead to three in the second inning, starting with a hit by Roberts. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, Roberts “beat out a roller to short and went to second on [Pete] Castiglione’s wild throw.”6 Waitkus’s groundout to second advanced Roberts to third. Ashburn’s second single of the game plated Roberts.

In the second, Pittsburgh got on the scoreboard on shortstop George Strickland’s two-out homer over the “Greenberg Gardens” fence in left, his fourth of the season. Roberts was known for allowing home runs – he retired with season and career records for most homers given up7 – but in 1951 he was relatively stingy. In a majors-high 315 innings, batters hit 20 home runs against him. Only three NL pitchers gave up fewer home runs per nine innings that season.8

The visitors countered against Dusak in the third. Del Ennis led off and singled. Pellagrini drove another “Greenberg Gardens” homer into the Philadelphia bullpen, pushing the Phils ahead, 5-1.

In the top of the fourth, after both Ashburn and Sisler walked, Mel Queen relieved Dusak and struck out Ennis to keep it a four-run game.9 The Phillies resumed their scoring an inning later, on Andy Seminick’s fourth home run of the season, a solo shot.

In the home-team half of the fifth, Roberts stranded two runners on base after Castiglione walked and George Metkovich singled.

The Phillies sent eight men to the plate in the sixth against Queen, scoring twice. Roberts drew a base on balls and stole second, the first of just three stolen bases of his 19-season career.10 He took third on Waitkus’s single but was trapped in a rundown and tagged out on Ashburn’s grounder to third. Sisler singled, scoring Waitkus and sending Ashburn to third, from which he scored on Ennis’s groundout. The Phillies were ahead, 8-1.

In the bottom of the sixth, three straight one-out hits led to two Pittsburgh runs. Wally Westlake and Pete Reiser singled, and Strickland’s double scored Westlake. With runners on second and third, Ed Fitz Gerald’s grounder to short scored Pete Reiser, narrowing the Phils’ lead to five runs.

The seventh went well for Pirates pitching. Their third hurler, Bill Werle, faced four batters. Only Roberts reached base when he singled, his second hit.

In the home half of the seventh, Castiglione singled and scored on Kiner’s double. Kiner was headed for his sixth consecutive home-run crown in 1951. He was a .330 career hitter with eight homers in 88 career at-bats against his fellow future Hall of Famer Roberts, including a .389 average in 1951. The inning ended with the score 8-4.

But that was as close as the Pirates came. In the eighth, Ashburn singled and Ennis homered, his fifth round-tripper of 1951. The Phillies tacked on two more runs in the ninth. The big hits were Roberts’ double, his third hit, and Ashburn’s single, his fourth.

Roberts set down the Pirates one-two-three in the ninth to preserve the Phils’ 12-4 victory and notch his fourth win.

It was the first time Roberts got three hits in a game, a feat that he accomplished three more times in his career.11 Roberts retired with a .167 career batting average, but that was still above average for a pitcher at that time. For example, during Roberts’ 1948-1966 major-league career, Phillies pitchers hit just .164 – but that was good enough to rank seventh among all teams in pitcher batting average.

Philadelphia’s most relentless offensive performance of the day came from a more expected source: center fielder Richie Ashburn, who was on his way to a .344 batting average in 1951, topping everyone in the NL except Stan Musial. Ashburn, batting second, reached base five times and scored once in the opener. In the second game, he reached base five more times and scored three times.12 He was the first National or American Leaguer to reach base on a hit or walk 10 times in a doubleheader since Ray Morehart of the Chicago White Sox on August 31, 1926.13

In the doubleheader’s second game, Roberts and Ashburn got on base nine times, just three short of the number of times the entire Pirates team did it.

After the Phillies racked up a total of 29 runs on 35 hits in the doubleheader, an article in the next day’s Pittsburgh Press began, “Groundskeeper John Fogarty was out buying a new home plate today and he’s sending the bill to the Phillies, who all but mutilated the 17-inch piece of rubber at Forbes Field yesterday.”14

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Harrison Golden and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Robin Roberts, Sport Magazine, December 1955 (SABR-Rucker Archive).

Sources

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org for player, team, and season data.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT195105202.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1951/B05202PIT1951.htm

Notes

1 In the second game of a doubleheader on August 17, 1941, the Phillies beat the New York Giants, 18-2.

2 Cady Lowery, “Robin Roberts Notches 28th Straight Complete Game Win,” baseballhall.org, Accessed November 17, 2024, https://baseballhall.org/discover/inside-pitch/robin-roberts-28-consecutive-complete-game.

3 “Robin Roberts Notches 28th Straight Complete Game Win.”

4 Stan Baumgartner, “Phillies Rout Pirates, 17-0, 12-4: Champions Total 35 Hits in 2 Tests,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 1951: 27. The cause of the injury was not stated.

5 Jack Hernon, “36,166 See Phils Shell Buc Pitching, 17-0, 12-4,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 18; Stan Baumgartner, “Phillies Rout Pirates 17-0, 12-4: Champions Total 35 Hits in 2 Tests.” Sisler’s streak eventually reached 14 games before he went hitless against the New York Giants on May 26.

6 “36,166 See Phils Shell Buc Pitching.”

7 Roberts allowed 46 homers in 1956, which was the major-league record until Bert Blyleven of the Minnesota Twins gave up 50 home runs in 1986. Over his career, Roberts yielded 505 home runs, a mark eventually topped by Jamie Moyer’s 522.

8 Chet Nichols (.231) and Vern Bickford (.383) of the Boston Braves and Gerry Staley (.555) of the Cardinals gave up fewer homers per nine innings than Roberts (.571) that year.

9 Dusak pitched twice more – in relief – in 1951, his final two times on the mound. The Pirates used him primarily as an infielder or outfielder for the rest of his major-league career, which ended a year later.

10 Roberts stole two bases in 1951, and then did not steal another base until 1960.

11 Roberts’ other three-hit games were against the Cardinals in 1955, the Chicago Cubs in 1956, and the Milwaukee Braves in 1958.

12 In 1951 Ashburn led the majors with the most games in which he had four or more hits, doing that nine times.

13 Morehart, also batting second, was playing for the White Sox. In the first game against the Detroit Tigers, Morehart got five hits. In the second game, he got four hits and a walk.

14 Les Biederman, “Like 1950: Pirates Lose Two, 17-0, 12-4,” Pittsburgh Press, May 21, 1951: 20. The Phillies finished 1951 with a 73-81 record, 23½ games behind the pennant-winning Giants. The Pirates came in seventh at 64-90, 32½ games back.