September 6, 1964: Umpire assault mars pennant-deciding game in NY-Penn League

While the expansion New York Mets were wallowing in the National League cellar, their affiliate in the Class D New York-Penn League was beating all comers. In 1962, when the New York major-league team posted a dismal 40-120 record, their affiliate in Auburn, New York, tied for third place in a six-team league with a 62-57 record.1 The Auburn squad beat first-place Jamestown in the first round of the playoffs, then knocked off Olean in the final round to win the league’s postseason title.2

The New York-Penn League reclassified to Class A for the 1963 season as part of a large-scale reorganization of the minor leagues.3 The parent club in New York went 51-111 that year, but the Auburn team won the league’s regular-season title with a 76-54 record, three games ahead of the Wellsville (New York) Red Sox. Future big-leaguers on manager Dick Cole’s team included Cleon Jones, John Stephenson, and Ron Locke. Auburn was eliminated by Batavia in the first round of the playoffs.4

Casey Stengel’s New York Mets stumbled once again in 1964, but Auburn set its sights on another title under new manager Clyde McCullough. Eleven players who passed through Auburn that season reached the majors, with future All-Star and World Series champion Tug McGraw the best-known.5

The team’s biggest offensive bopper, 22-year-old outfielder Danny Napoleon, had a monster season. He hit .351 in 126 games, leading the loop with 134 RBIs and finishing second with 36 home runs.6 Outfielder Bernie Smith hit .391 in 63 games, adding 12 homers and 45 RBIs. On the basepaths, infielder Richard Haymore placed second in the league with 23 stolen bases; outfielder Richard Bazinet added 19. As a team, the Mets led the loop in hits, RBIs, batting average,7 on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.

The Mets were potent on the mound too, as teammates William “Jerry” Craft8 and Richard Peterson each won 15 games, tying them for second-most in the league. Peterson, Craft, and future big-leaguer Bob Johnson all ranked in the top 10 for strikeouts, as well. The Auburn staff posted a league-best 4.26 ERA, well below the league average of 4.98.

There was only one team Auburn couldn’t shake in the summer of ’64. Manager Wayne Terwilliger’s Geneva (New York) Senators stayed within striking distance, with several future major leaguers leading the way. Catcher Paul Casanova hit .325 with 19 homers and 99 RBIs. Outfielder Dick Smith added a .291 average, 7 homers, 84 RBIs, and 15 stolen bases. And right-hander Dick Nold, a 21-year-old San Franciscan in his second pro season, was king of the loop’s starting pitchers. Nold led the league with 20 wins, 20 complete games, 3 shutouts, 249 innings pitched, and 274 strikeouts.

Others making major contributions included outfielders Edward Mouton (.294, 17 HR) and Robert Ferrell (.277, 18 HR) and pitchers Michael Blue (15-6, 4.41 ERA in 42 games) and Thomas Gondek (13-7, 4.29 in 30 games).

Geneva mounted a mighty charge in August and early September, picking up 7½ games in 28 days9 and taking a half-game lead into the final weekend.10 To heighten the drama, the Senators and Mets were scheduled to play each other twice to close the season.

On September 5, the season’s second-to-last day, Auburn won a do-or-die game against Geneva at home, 6-4, to claim a half-game lead.11 The final game, at Geneva on September 6, would decide the regular-season title. After that, the two teams – as the league’s top finishers – would meet again in the playoffs, facing each other in an unusual single best-of-seven round.12

Not surprisingly, Nold got the start for Geneva, while Auburn tapped Craft, a second-year left-hander. A standing-room crowd of 1,932, including hundreds of horn- and whistle-toting rooters from Auburn, packed Geneva’s little Shuron Park.13 The umpiring crew was made up of three first-year arbiters14 – Larry Bowman, Bob Goodhart, and James “Jake” O’Donnell. O’Donnell was the only one of the three to reach the majors, working 489 American League games between 1968 and 1971.

Amid a nailbiting atmosphere, one sportswriter compared to the World Series, Geneva delighted its home fans by scoring first.15 In the second inning, left fielder Ferrell flared a single to center. The Senators called for a hit-and-run, and first baseman Joe Klein16 grounded a ball through the hole vacated by shortstop John Pavlus as he ran to cover second. With runners on first and third, shortstop Joe Catanzaro laid down a suicide squeeze. Craft threw slow and high to the plate, and Ferrell beat the tag for a 1-0 Senators lead.17

Craft settled down after that. In a seven-inning stint, he allowed Geneva only two additional hits and one intentional walk. He got help in the fourth inning from center fielder Bernie Smith, who had made an outstanding running catch the previous night. After right fielder Mouton led off with a single, Ferrell belted a drive into the gap in right-center. Smith made a sprinting, lunging, spectacular grab, holding onto the ball as he banged into the scoreboard.

Mouton replied with a strong outfield play of his own in the top of the sixth. After Pavlus singled and stole second, Auburn’s Roger Wattler banged a hit into right field. Mouton fielded the ball and threw a rocket to Casanova at home plate, cutting down Pavlus trying to score.

The score remained 1-0 entering the eighth inning, with Nold still pitching strongly for Geneva. Auburn third baseman Jim Lampe reached first when shortstop Catanzaro mishandled his grounder. One out later, Bernie Smith singled to put runners on first and second. At that point, the game and the season turned.

Pavlus popped a looper into center field, where Geneva’s Dick Smith tried to catch the ball off his shoetops. At first, he appeared to have made the catch; then the ball popped loose. The runners, holding back in case the ball was caught, took off. Dick Smith fired to Catanzaro for the force at second, but base umpire Bowman ruled Bernie Smith safe.

The Auburn newspaper’s game story described the play simply as an unsuccessful force attempt followed by a rhubarb. The Geneva paper described it, bluntly and at length, as an obvious out and a blown call – “the unkindest cut of this or any other season by an umpire.”18

Napoleon was the next batter, and he came through mightily, pounding a slow curve from Nold into right-center field for a double that scored Lampe and Bernie Smith. Auburn claimed a 2-1 lead.

Lefty reliever Steve Dillon, who had pitched three games for the major-league Mets in 1963 and ’64, came on in the eighth and ninth. He stifled the Senators, setting down the final six batters in order. With two away in the ninth, Dillon got Ferrell to pop to third base. As the ball settled into Lampe’s glove, Auburn players and fans stormed the field for a raucous celebration. Auburn’s victory in a 2-1 squeaker had clinched the regular-season title by a 1½-game margin.

An angry group of Geneva fans reacted violently. They punched Bowman in the face and poured drinks on him, and one reportedly hit him in the head with a transistor radio. Geneva general manager Joe McDonough intervened to help Bowman out of trouble.

After the game, league President Vince McNamara removed Bowman from the umpiring crew working the playoffs, though he declined to give a reason. Geneva manager Terwilliger blasted Bowman: “They should have had umpires on the bases who could see to tell the blind umpires what was going on.”19

The best-of-seven playoffs were slightly less dramatic. Auburn won the first three games, then Geneva rallied for two wins. Auburn claimed the postseason title by winning the sixth game, 6-1, behind McGraw’s six-hitter.20 Napoleon had already claimed the league’s Rookie of the Year award, bestowed in late August.21

The bad taste of the final game lingered for Geneva fans and players. In June 1971, former first baseman Klein – then managing the Pittsfield (Massachusetts) Senators of the Eastern League – visited Geneva. Asked by a sportswriter about the fateful game and the umpire involved, Klein replied bitterly: “I still remember his name. It was Larry Bowman.”22

Bowman returned as a New York-Penn League umpire in 1965. He received a brief flurry of media attention when he was paired with Dale Long, the former first baseman who was launching a career in umpiring.23 Bowman moved on to the Class A Carolina League in 1966, then left professional umping.24 On August 26, 1972, less than eight years after the dust-up in Geneva, Larry Bowman died in a Syracuse, New York, hospital. He was 45 and had been employed by a furniture retailer.25

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bill Marston and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

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

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the September 8, 1964, editions of the Geneva (New York) Times and Auburn (New York) Citizen-Advertiser published box scores.

The author thanks FultonHistory.com for making many of the cited newspapers available online.

Photo of 1966 Topps card #87 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 The 1962 Auburn Mets tied for third place with the Olean (New York) Red Sox. Both teams finished seven games behind the regular-season champion Jamestown (New York) Tigers, a Detroit affiliate.

2 Associated Press, “Auburn Mets Cop Title on Grand Slam in Sixth,” Kingston (New York) Daily Freeman, August 30, 1962: 28.

3 John Cronin, “Truth in the Minor League Class Structure: The Case for the Reclassification of the Minors,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, spring 2013: 87-91.

4 United Press International, “Batavia, Tigers in NYP Finals,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, September 6, 1963: 1D.

5 McGraw, a first-year player in 1964, was 19 years old for most of the season. He divided the year between three levels at the lowest rungs of the minors, including three games in Auburn, where he went 1-2 with a 1.89 ERA. He reached the majors with the Mets the following season.

6 Bill Schlesinger of Wellsville, a Boston Red Sox affiliate, led the league with 37 homers. According to the league’s 2019 media guide (accessed online June 20, 2022), the 1964 league batting champion was Wenton Etheridge of Binghamton, who hit .365 in 106 games. The New York-Penn League played a 129-game schedule.

7 Auburn’s team batting average was an even .300, 16 points ahead of the league-wide batting average.

8 Baseball-Reference lists him as William Craft; game stories from 1964 call him Jerry.

9 Norm Jollow, “Dan Deserved Honors; Geneva Deserved Better;” Geneva (New York) Times, September 8, 1964: 12.

10 Associated Press, “Geneva Clings to Slim NY-P Lead,” Sayre (Pennsylvania) Evening Times, September 5, 1964: 6. Geneva led with a 79-49 record entering the weekend, while Auburn was a half-game back at 77-48, according to standings printed in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 5, 1964: 1D.

11 “Auburn Edges Geneva, Cops NYP League Lead,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 6, 1964: 3D.

12 League President Vince McNamara said in early September that two of the league’s top four teams suggested having no playoffs at all because of the expense involved. Rather than cancel the playoffs, McNamara opted to trim them down to a single round, pitting the two top teams against each other. Associated Press, “Auburn, Geneva to Meet in Post Season Playoff,” Sayre Evening Times, September 3, 1964: 10.

13 The two cities are less than 30 highway miles apart.

14 The Sporting News umpire cards for the three umpires, available through Retrosheet, indicate that 1964 was each man’s first season as a pro umpire.

15 Leo Pinckney, “Mets Cop NY-P League Flag, Win 1st Playoff Game,” Auburn (New York) Citizen-Advertiser, September 8, 1964: 16. Pinckney, the sports editor of the Auburn paper, later became the president of the New York-Penn League.

16 Klein never reached the major leagues as a player, manager, or coach, but served as general manager of three major-league teams in the 1980s and 1990s.

17 Unless otherwise noted, game detail in this story is taken from Jollow, “Dan Deserved Honors; Geneva Deserved Better,” and Pinckney, “Mets Cop NY-P League Flag, Win 1st Playoff Game.”

18 Jollow, “Dan Deserved Honors; Geneva Deserved Better.” As sportswriters will, Jollow continued to mention Bowman’s call in game stories as late as 1977, bringing it up on subsequent occasions when an umpire’s disputed ruling went against a Geneva team.

19 Jollow, “Dan Deserved Honors; Geneva Deserved Better”; “Auburn Defends NYP Championship, Defeating Geneva in 2-1 Game,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 7, 1964: 3D; Leo A. Pinckney, “Mets Use Home Run Ball to Take Second Playoff Game,” Auburn Citizen-Advertiser, September 9, 1964: 20. The Democrat and Chronicle identified the device used to pummel Bowman as a camera; the Geneva Times and Auburn Citizen-Advertiser called it a portable radio.

20 Associated Press, “Auburn Mets Win NY-P Pennant Over Geneva,” Sayre Evening Times, September 14, 1964: 8.

21 Associated Press, “Auburn Ace Takes NY-P Rookie Title,” Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette, August 21, 1964: 14.

22 Norm Jollow, “Klein Comes Back,” Geneva Times, June 28, 1971: 20.

23 Frank Hyde, “NY-P League Ump’s Record May Never Be Broken,” Jamestown (New York) Post-Journal, May 1, 1965: 19. Long’s Sporting News umpire card indicates he rose as high as the Triple-A International League as an umpire but never reached the majors.

24 The Sporting News umpire card for Larry Bowman, accessed via Retrosheet on June 20, 2022.

25 “Larry Bowman, 45; Active as Umpire,” Syracuse (New York) Post-Standard, August 27, 1972: 30.