September 15, 1977: Orioles manager Earl Weaver forfeits game in a pennant race — over a tarpaulin

“Always stand on principle … even if you stand alone.” — John Adams1

During the 1970s, four American League games ended in forfeit. Three were the result of fans throwing caution to the wind – near the end of the Senators’ farewell to Washington in September 1971, during the Cleveland Indians’ 10-cent beer night in June 1974, and between games of the Chicago White Sox’ disastrous Disco Demolition Night promotion in July 1979.

By contrast, the fourth forfeit, awarded to the expansion Toronto Blue Jays at Exhibition Stadium on September 15, 1977, sprang from Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver putting safety first.

The Orioles were 84-58 and in third place in the AL East Division, three games behind the first-place New York Yankees, when they arrived in Toronto for a four-game series in mid-September. With no head-to-head games left against New York, the Orioles needed to win and get help from others for a shot at the division title. They entered Canada riding a four-game winning streak, while the hometown Blue Jays, returning home after splitting a four-game series in New York to help tighten the race, were on the way to a 107-loss season.

Idle for a day after taking the series opener on Monday, September 12, the Orioles saw the baseball world turn its attention to New York, where the Yankees were opening a three-game series with the second-place Boston Red Sox. “Everybody talks about the Yankees and Red Sox as though it’s a two-team race” wrote Dick Young of the New York Daily News, who then advised readers to not forget about the “Baltimore Blankfaces.”2 In a Baltimore Sun article headlined “No One but Orioles Thinks They Can Win AL East Flag Race,” Weaver asked rhetorically, “What happens if we win? Do they let us go to Kansas City [to play the AL West Division champion Royals]?”3

The Orioles swept the Blue Jays in a Wednesday twin bill to move ahead of Boston, which had dropped two straight in New York.4 A win on Thursday would keep Baltimore riding high going into a three-game home series with Boston.

Looking to avoid a series sweep, Blue Jays manager Roy Hartsfield sent 21-year-old rookie Jim Clancy to the mound for the finale. A former Texas Rangers prospect taken sixth overall in the 1976 expansion draft, Clancy was 3-6 in nine starts with a 5.43 ERA. Weaver countered with southpaw Ross Grimsley, his number-four starter in a rotation headlined by three-time AL Cy Young Award winner Jim Palmer. Grimsley carried a respectable 13-8 record with a 3.94 ERA but had allowed a season-high three home runs in his previous start at Exhibition Stadium, a no-decision on June 25. Behind Grimsley was an infield that recently lost 16-time Gold Glove-winning third baseman Brooks Robinson, who retired four weeks earlier,5 but had a budding future Hall of Famer on the other side of the diamond, 21-year-old rookie first baseman Eddie Murray.

Rain was in the forecast, but it held off for the start of the game, played before a crowd of 14,015 in the football stadium reconfigured to accommodate baseball. Toronto advanced a runner to third with two out in the second inning, but otherwise neither side threatened until the third, by which time a light rain was falling.

In the top of that inning, Baltimore’s rookie catcher Dave Skaggs singled to center, then went to third base on a double by Al Bumbry. Skaggs broke for home on a grounder hit by Rich Dauer to shortstop Tim Nordbrook, a former Oriole, but was gunned down. Clancy then loaded the bases by walking Ken Singleton, whose Orioles-record 49-game on-base streak had ended the day before.6 DH Lee May, normally a terror with the bases loaded, grounded out to keep the game scoreless.7

Toronto broke through with four runs in the fourth. DH Doug Rader walked leading off, was sacrificed to second, and moved to third on an infield single by Steve Bowling. With 23-year-old catcher Rick Cerone batting, Grimsley uncorked a wild pitch, allowing Rader to score. Cerone, Toronto’s everyday backstop since his promotion from Triple-A Charleston four weeks earlier,8 doubled to center, scoring Bowling. A single by Nordbrook, a sacrifice fly by Canadian native Dave McKay, and a single by Gary Woods put the Blue Jays up, 4-0.

Clancy set the Orioles down in order in the fifth, with Dauer grounding to shortstop to end the inning. By this time, the steadily falling rain had made the dirt cutouts around each base slippery. To keep the Blue Jays’ two bullpen mounds down the left-field line from getting slick, the grounds crew covered them with a small tarpaulin.9

Out of the visiting dugout popped Weaver. Gesturing in the direction of the tarp, he told home-plate umpire Larry Barnett, “[t]hey can’t put that thing there.”10 Left fielder Andrés Mora had stumbled on one of the mounds the day before, twisting his back, and Weaver was convinced that the tarp would make a similar encounter disastrous.11

For 20 minutes Weaver hectored the umpiring crew to remove the tarp as the partisan crowd “hooted and jeered.”12 Crew chief Marty Springstead claimed he lacked the authority to direct the grounds crew to take the tarp off but he had sandbags that were holding down the tarp removed, and the tarp doubled over to cover only one mound. Hartsfield’s position that he didn’t want relievers “warming up in a quagmire in the ninth” kept Springstead from going further.13 Weaver remained unsatisfied. Springstead then offered that Baltimore could play the game under protest, but to no avail. 

Weaver pulled his players off the field and took them back into the clubhouse, where they voted on whether to keep playing. All agreed that they would not play with a tarp in place. “Earl told us we had a chance to forfeit, but we decided to stick together,” said shortstop Mark Belanger, the team’s second longest tenured player.14 “Marty’s just trying to stick it to Earl, Just remove the tarp. What’s so difficult about that?”

Baltimore’s stance made clear, Barnett stepped behind home plate and signaled to the press box that the game was a forfeit, officially a 9-0 win for Toronto.15

“I told Marty that as soon as the tarpaulin came off, we were willing, ready and able to play,” Weaver recounted to dumbfounded reporters after the game. “I’ll take the loss rather than have someone hurt.”16 Taking a shot at his counterpart, Weaver added, “Maybe Hartsfield doesn’t give a damn about his players getting hurt, but I do. I expect I’ll be with these boys another five years or so and I might’ve saved somebody’s career tonight.”17

Baltimore general manager Hank Peters was unequivocal in his support for Weaver. “I don’t buy the argument that the umpires couldn’t remove the tarpaulin if it was a legitimate request,” he said, adding, “It appears the umpires were dead wrong and that they went out of their way to find a reason [to forfeit the game].”18

Unwilling to accept the forfeit decision as final, Weaver vowed to talk with AL President Lee MacPhail and request that the game be resumed when the Blue Jays visited Baltimore the following week. He also planned to get with the Players Association to help get the bullpen moved “to a separate area like they do in big-league parks.”19 Addressing the optics of forfeiting a game during a stretch run, Weaver was steadfast. “I realize this one game could cost us the championship, but we’ve got 16 games left and I want to go the rest of the way with all of these guys rather than have one or two of them knocked out with some foolish injury.”20

Opinions in the press on Weaver’s actions were mixed. Ernie Roberts of the Boston Globe suggested it was “a worthwhile gamble that a rainswept game he was losing anyway would be resumed under better conditions.”21 The Toronto Star’s Milt Dunnell maintained that Weaver should be suspended for his “tantrum.”22 Baltimore Sun sports columnist Bob Maisel credited Weaver with getting results but reminding readers, “[I]f it is peace and quiet you want with your baseball, then Earl Weaver is not your man.”23

MacPhail, who’d sided with Weaver in a rules interpretation disagreement with Springstead three months earlier,24 was unsympathetic this time. He affirmed the forfeit days later.25 The Orioles won 10 of the 15 games they played before the regular season came to a close but it wasn’t enough to catch New York. Weaver spent another six-plus seasons at the helm for the Orioles, compiling a record of 571-445 (.562) and winning the 1979 AL pennant.

Acknowledgments

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

Photo credit: Earl Weaver arguing with an umpire in 1977 (Trading Card Database).

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Stathead.com, and Baseball-Almanac.com websites, including box scores listed at these links:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR197709150.shtml 

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1977/B09150TOR1977.htm

Notes

1 “Quotes,” John Adams Historical Society website, www.john-adams-heritage.com/quotes, accessed October 22, 2024.

2 Dick Young, “And Don’t Forget the Baltimore Blankfaces,” New York Daily News, September 13, 1977: 27C.

3 Ken Nigro, “No One but Orioles Thinks They Can Win AL East Flag Race,” Baltimore Sun, September 14, 1977: C5.

4 The Orioles infield turned five groundball double plays in the nightcap game of their September 14 twilight-night doubleheader sweep, tying a franchise record last equaled in 1959.

5 Robinson’s fans celebrated his remarkable career three days after this game with a day in his honor back at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. Austin Gisriel, “September 18, 1977: “Thanks, Brooks” Day in Baltimore,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-18-1977-thanks-brooks-day-in-baltimore/. Accessed October 24, 2024.

6 The franchise record at the time was 52 games, set by Jack Tobin of the 1922 St. Louis Browns. Kevin Millar topped Singleton’s record and matched Tobin’s in 2007. 

7 May had a lifetime .371 average with the bases loaded and hit 11 grand slams. Among the 13 players who had 150 or more plate appearances with the bases loaded between 1967 and 1979, the years in which May was a regular, only Hall of Famer Rod Carew had a higher batting average.

8 Cerone was brought up after Ernie Whitt, Toronto’s regular catcher for most of the season, was injured in a home plate collision. “Rick Cerone Is Recalled,” Florence (South Carolina) Morning News, August 18, 1977: 4-B.

9 Allan Ryan, “Orioles May Have Forfeited Pennant,” Toronto Star, September 16, 1977: B1.

10 Frank Dolson, “Weaver Waive the Flag?” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 17, 1977: 1-C.

11 Before tweaking his back, Mora likely suffered a headache from being detained by immigration officials upon arriving in Toronto. The Mexican native’s passport had expired. “Orioles Are Unlikely to Have 20-Game Winner,” Baltimore Sun, September 13, 1977: C8.

12 “Orioles May Have Forfeited Pennant.”

13 “Weaver Waive the Flag?”

14 “Umpires Forfeit Game to Jays When Birds Protest Use of Tarp,” Baltimore Sun, September 15, 1977: C1. Palmer debuted with Baltimore in April 1965, three months before Belanger did.

15 The forfeit decision was based on Rule 4.15A, which stated “[A] game may be forfeited to the opposing team when a team fails to appear on the field, or being upon the field, refuses to start play within five minutes after the umpire has called ‘Play’ … unless such delayed appearance is, in the umpire’s judgment, unavoidable.” “Umpires Forfeit Game to Jays When Birds Protest Use of Tarp.”

16 “Umpires Forfeit Game to Jays When Birds Protest Use of Tarp.”

17 “Orioles May Have Forfeited Pennant.”

18 “Umpires Forfeit Game to Jays When Birds Protest Use of Tarp.”

19 “Orioles May Have Forfeited Pennant.”

20 “Orioles May Have Forfeited Pennant.” One unnoticed bright spot of the forfeit was that it allowed the team to get an early start on their 110-mile journey to the Buffalo airport. Always looking for a competitive advantage, Weaver had insisted that the team fly out of Buffalo in advance of their series opener with Boston the next day, rather than fly out of Toronto on Friday morning, as local laws banned flights after 11 P.M. Baltimore handily won its Friday game with Boston, 6-1. “No One but Orioles Thinks They Can Win AL East Flag Race.”

21 Ernie Roberts, “Weaver Rates High Marks; Zimmer Doesn’t,” Boston Globe, September 17, 1977: 17.

22 Milt Dunnell, “Yanks to Weaver: Thanks, Old Buddy,” Toronto Star, September 16, 1977: B1.

23 Bob Maisel, “The Morning After,” Baltimore Sun, September 17, 1977: B5.

24 On June 29 Weaver successfully challenged an umpiring crew’s decision to wave a runner home from first base on a throw into the Cleveland Indians dugout from an Orioles infielder. His objection took the winning run off the scoreboard for the Cleveland in a game that Baltimore later won. Afterward MacPhail reportedly told Weaver that he was “100% right and the umpires were 100% wrong.” Joseph Wancho, “June 29, 1977: Earl Weaver’s Rule Book Saves Orioles from Defeat,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/june-29-1977-earl-weavers-rule-book-saves-orioles-from-defeat/. Accessed October 24, 2024.

25 Paul L. Montgomery, “Orioles Trounce Red Sox, 11-2,” New York Times, September 18, 1977: 5-1.