Bats on Fire
This article was written by Jay Gauthreaux
This article was published in Baseball in New York City (SABR 21, 1991)
A crowd of 56,508 was on hand to witness a bizarre opening game of a doubleheader on April 30, 1944 at the polo Grounds. The Giants took pleasure in defeating their hated rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers 26-8 in a game where the starting pitchers were cousins, an opposing manager was given the thumb not by one umpire, but by all three and a Giants player was struck by a thrown bottle in a sensitive area.
Brooklyn starter Rube Mellon and his older cousin, Giants starter Cliff shared a family trail of big ears. A sportswriter quipped; “Between them, the two Meltons couldn’t get through a revolving door.” Because of the way the Dodgers were pitching, they resembled a revolving door; giving up a total of 26 runs on 18 hits.
The Giants unleashed their barrage in the first, with the Dodgers ahead 2-0. Rube gave up three bases on balls picking off one of the runners. He then served up a homer to Giants first baseman Phil Weintraub making the score 3-2. After one inning, Durocher has seen enough of Cliff’s cousin and brought in Les Webber to start the next inning. Webber then proceeded to give up three more runs; including a two-run homer by shortstop Buddy Kerr.
It had all the makings of a Marx Brothers picture, the more Durocher brought in pitchers the stranger it got.
The next victim called to mound was Al Zachary.
Zachary picked up where Webber left off, allowing two Giants to reach first on passes, and letting two of them advance home. Fred Ostermueller was next out of the bullpen, but wished he’d stayed in bed. He allowed eight runs on just two hits and walked two. (Ostermueller must have set a major league record for walks in an inning!)
While the Giants were cruising with a 16-7 lead in the sixth, Durocher brought in another victim to the mound. This time, Tom Warren gave up two more runs.
By this time, Leo was tearing out what little hair he had left. In an attempt to probably fire up the troops, Leo decided to talk to “friends”, the men in blue. He started talking with home plate umpire “Beans” Reardon. When Leo was finished, home plate was covered with dirt.
With act one of his skit over, Leo brought up the next curtain by appearing with first base umpire Tom Dunn in order to get the umps approval. And Dunn, having given Leo enough time, acted in concert with the other umpires gave Durocher the thumb and out he went. While Leo was making his grand exit fans showed their disapproval by converting the playing field into a trash heap.
The Giants continued the hit parade in the eighth; scoring eight more runs and setting a new team record for runs scored with 26. They broke the old record by one run, which coincidentally was set by the New York Giants in a game against Cincinnati in June of 1901 where the final score was 25-13.
Harry Feldman came on in the fourth for New York after Cliff Melton faltered and gave up seven runs on seven hits.
When the “variety” show was finally over, the Giants and Dodgers were making their way to the clubhouse when a fan allegedly took aim and let a bottle fly in the direction of Joe Medwick striking him in the groin.
The smoke had cleared, Feldman had given up only one run off of five hits in the five and two- thirds innings for the win. The Polo Grounds hit men banged out a total of 18 hits, with their star first baseman Phil Weintraub knocking in 11 runs with a home run, triple, two doubles and missed by one RBI the record of “Sunny” Jim Bottomley set in 1926. Catcher Ernie Lombardi and Mel Ott both had good days in their own right: Lombardi drove in 7 runs, while Ott walked 6 times tying his own record set 15 years earlier.
The Dodgers issued a total of 17 free passes tying the major league record ironically set by the Dodgers team of 1903 against Philadelphia.
Lost in the shuffle was Dodgers’ first baseman Howie Schultz, who went 3 for 4 with 2 homers in a losing cause.
The Giants gave their fans something to cheer about, even though they would lose the nightcap by a score of 5-4. For the first time since 1937, the Giants would do better in the standings than their neighborhood rivals from Flatbush. It would not be until 1951 that they would give their fans something more to cheer about.