Forfeits

Forfeits were relatively commonplace in the early days of baseball. There was at least one forfeit in the major leagues every year from 1883 to 1907, including 13 in 1884. A review of the reasons for these forfeits reveals how ”bush league” the major leagues still were. In 1889, St. Louis’s American Association team failed to show up for scheduled game in Brooklyn because they feared for their safety. The next year, the National League’s New York Giants lost a game when pitcher Mickey Welch, upset over the work of the home plate umpire, simply stood on the mound and refused to pitch. Brooklyn of the American Association and Louisville of the National League both forfeited home games when they ran out of baseballs. The. Baltimore Orioles left a game early because they needed to catch a train.

Many forfeits were the results of bad behavior­—brawls, fan violence, outrageous arguments among players, managers, and umpires. As Bill James has written, “Baseball in the 1890s was violent. It was violent in every respect.” American society itself, for that matter, was violent in many respects. Three presidents were assassinated within a span of 36 years. In the post-Reconstruction South, lynchings were not uncommon. Labor unions literally battled employers to the death. It was an era when grown men settled common, everyday disagreements by walloping the bejeezus out of one another. Baseball was not immune to the spirit of the times.

As the major leagues became better organized and more professional in their operations—and as society became at least a tad more genteel—forfeits became increasingly rare. By 1920, a forfeit had become a noteworthy event. This article will focus on the 13 forfeits that have occurred since the 1920 season.

SHIBE PARK, AUGUST 20, 1920
Chicago White Sox defeat Philadelphia Athletics

A forfeit triggered by a mass misunderstanding and some good old-fashioned stubbornness. Chicago led Philadelphia 5-2 in the second game of a doubleheader. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, pinch-hitter Lena Styles tapped a weak ground ball, which White Sox pitcher Dickey Kerr scooped up near the first base line. Kerr tagged Styles, apparently ending the game, but umpire Ollie Chill ruled the ball had rolled foul just before Kerr picked it up.

At the time it was common practice for fans to walk across field at the conclusion of a game, so once Kerr applied the tag, fans from the bleachers streamed onto the diamond, not realizing that Chill had ruled a foul ball. Philadelphia police corralled the onrushing rabble and herded them back toward the outfield fence, but the fans decided that, since the game was just about over anyway, they would just wait it out there in the nether reaches of the field rather than return to their seats.

The outnumbered police figured they had done enough and didn’t want to force the issue. Umpire Brick Owens strolled out to see if he could coax the fans off the field, but only succeeded in getting himself pelted with garbage. Next, Chill asked Connie Mack for help, but the Athletics manager merely turned his palms upward as if to say, “What am I supposed to do?” Chill had no choice but to forfeit the game to Chicago. In disgust, fans who remained in the stands cast a plague of seat cushions upon their brethren down on the field.

NAVIN FIELD, JUNE 13, 1924
New York Yankees defeat Detroit Tigers

Just a few weeks earlier these clubs had brawled at Yankee Stadium, so neither of them was in the mood to take much from the other on this Friday the 13th. With his team ahead 10-6 as he led off the ninth inning, Babe Ruth had to duck away from a head-high fastball from Tigers reliever Bert Cole. On his way back to the dugout after fouling out, Ruth warned the next hitter, Bob Meusel, that he had spied Cobb in center field signaling Cole to throw at Meusel. Then as Meusel stepped in, catcher Johnny Bassler barked out to Cole, “Come on now, don’t be afraid to get it close to his head.” Cole settled for the ribs instead, plunking Meusel with his first pitch. Meusel headed for the mound-albeit apparently not very quickly or purposefully, because home plate umpire Billy Evans managed to restrain him before he was able to get to Cole.

The fun was only starting. Ruth was irate, perhaps even more so than Meusel. As the benches cleared, Ruth raced out and began screaming at Cobb. Cobb and Ruth had long resented one another, and it appeared that they were going to mix it up until umpire Red Ormsby and Yankee manager Miller Huggins got between them. In the middle of the whole mess was Wally Pipp, the on-deck hitter, wielding his bat. Cobb said Pipp was just asking for more trouble by waving his bat around, but Pipp claimed that was ridiculous. “Nobody did more to pacify the scrappers as I did,” he was quoted as saying.

Ruth, Meusel, and Cole all were ejected. In order to get to the Yankee clubhouse, though, Meusel and Ruth had to walk through the Detroit dugout. The Tigers couldn’t help themselves. They began shouting at the two Yankees, whereupon Meusel snapped again, taking a swing at infielder Fred Haney. Within seconds both teams were engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the Tiger bench. According to one account, Pipp fired his bat into the middle of the scrum, which leads one to question his skills as a peacemaker. At this point fans rushed the field, some throwing chairs at the Yankee players. There was no way for the game to continue. Evans declared a forfeit and ordered police to clear a path for the Yankees to escape to their clubhouse. American League president Ban Johnson suspended Meusel and Cole, and slapped Ruth with a $50 fine.

COMISKEY PARK, APRIL 26, 1925
Cleveland Indians defeat Chicago White Sox

Lots of fans at this game probably made it home not realizing they had just seen (and, in some cases, caused) a forfeit. A record crowd of more than 44,000 crammed into Comiskey Park, forcing the team to rope off part of the outfield to accommodate the overflow. In the first inning, a throng broke through the ropes in the outfield and assumed stations in foul territory behind third base. James Crusinberry of the Chicago Tribune estimated about 7,500-8,000 fans stood in roped-off sections on the field. The Indians led 7-2 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth when Chicago’s Willie Kamm hit a routine ground ball to shortstop Joe Sewell. As the ball settled in Sewell’s glove, fans had already begun to pour onto the field. First baseman Ray Knode took Sewell’s throw in front of the base and was unable to locate the bag with his foot. Billy Evans ruled Kamm safe, so the White Sox were still alive, but the crowd had overrun the field. Umpire in chief Pants Rowland, who had managed Chicago to a World Series championship eight seasons earlier, forfeited the game to Cleveland.

BAKER BOWL, JUNE 6, 1937
St. Louis Cardinals defeat Philadelphia Phillies

In the days of the Sunday curfew, prior to the advent of lights in major league stadiums, teams occasionally sank to absurd lows as they schemed to beat the clock. This game was one of the most ridiculous examples. St. Louis defeated Philadelphia 7-2 in the first game of a doubleheader-a game that was delayed by rain for an hour and 28 minutes. The second game began at 5:36 P.M., less than 90 minutes away from Philadelphia’s 6:59 Sunday curfew. The Gashouse Gang Cardinals pounced on Hugh “Losing Pitcher” Mulcahy for five runs in the top of the first inning, and with Jesse Haines looking strong after coming out of the bullpen for St. Louis in the first, the Phillies decided their only chance was to drag things out so that the clock struck 7:00 before the game became official.

The fourth inning resembled a scene from The Bad News Bears. The Cards’ Pepper Martin loped toward second in a halfhearted stolen base “attempt.” He was able to reach second only because of a “particularly leisurely” throw by catcher Earl Grace. Joe Medwick, who had homered in the first inning, drove in Martin when his shot eluded the grasp of an indifferent Leo Norris at shortstop. Medwick barreled toward second, hoping to be retired. The throw from the outfield did, in fact, beat Medwick to the bag, but Norris just stood there with the ball as a steaming mad Medwick reluctantly inched into second base. Phillies manager Jimmie Wilson then was thrown out after engineering an interminable pitching change. In the fifth inning, Leo Durocher grounded to Norris, who, completely lacking subtlety, rocketed his throw directly into the Philadelphia dugout. Then came another pitching change, as the Phillies brought in Syl Johnson. Meanwhile, umpire Bill Klem was going nuts. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Klem was “frothing at the mouth like a mad dog, running from player to player, shaking his finger at their noses and spouting words of liquid fire.” Johnson, normally an excellent control pitcher, sailed his first pitch over Martin’s head, but Martin swung anyway. Johnson’s next pitch was nowhere near home plate, with Durocher scoring on the wild pitch. With that, Klem marched in and ordered home plate umpire Ziggy Sears to declare a forfeit.

Afterward, Wilson was asked if he had ordered his players to stall. “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’,” he explained. But he allowed, “If we were guilty of stalling, then the Cardinals were equally culpable. They started swinging at every pitch from the second inning on and refused to run out balls to the infield.” National League president Ford Frick wasn’t buying it; he fined Wilson $100. The individual hitting statistics didn’t count because the game was forfeited before becoming official, so Medwick didn’t get credit for his home run. Because of that, he had to share the National League home run title with Mel Ott.

FENWAY PARK, SEPTEMBER 3, 1939
New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox (overturned)

A forfeit that wasn’t. The Yankees had long since turned the American League pennant race into a joke. Despite losing the first game of this doubleheader, they still had a 12½ game lead over Boston. The nightcap was tied at 5-5 as the clock ticked toward Massachusetts’ 6:30 P.M. Sunday curfew. Under state law, no inning could begin after 6:15 and no play at all was permitted after 6:30. The Yankees began their half of the eighth inning at around 6:10 and quickly scored two runs to take a 7-5 lead. For those runs to hold up, however, New York had to make some outs in very short order, then retire the Red Sox before 6:30. Otherwise the game would revert to a 5-5 tie, the score at the end of the seventh. The problem for the Yankees was that after scoring the tie-breaking runs they still had a couple of men on base with only one out. Everyone knew the deal. The Red Sox had time on their side, while the Yankees wanted to make outs as quickly as possible.

With George Selkirk at third base and Joe Gordon at second, Red Sox manager Joe Cronin ordered Eldon Auker to intentionally walk Babe Dahlgren. In an effort to make a hasty out, Selkirk swung at Auker’s first wide pitch. Cronin immediately declared that he was playing the game under protest, and home plate umpire Cal Hubbard warned Dahlgren to knock it off. So, the Yankees switched to Plan B. On the next pitch, manager Joe McCarthy ordered a double steal “attempt,” with Selkirk jogging toward the plate as the pitch was released. He strolled right into the waiting tag of Boston catcher Johnny Peacock for the second out. Next pitch, same thing. This time Gordon sauntered toward the plate, where Peacock, obviously having none of this nonsense, again applied the tag.

This was more than Cronin and the Red Sox faithful could tolerate. While Cronin argued with Hubbard, fans littered the field with hot dogs, pop bottles, straw hats, and just about anything else that would fly. By the time the grounds crew could clean up the mess, the curfew time was past. Hubbard forfeited the game to the Yankees.

But five days later, American League president Will Harridge overruled Hubbard, declared the game a tie, and ordered it replayed later in September. He also fined Dahlgren, Gordon, and Selkirk $100 apiece for their “reprehensible conduct.” Barrow publicly defended his players, asserting that they were just following McCarthy’s orders, and that it really was all Cronin’s fault anyway because he tried to delay the game with an intentional walk. Barrow lost that fight-but it likely didn’t much matter much to him a month later, when his Yankees swept the Reds in the World Series.

GRIFFITH STADIUM, AUGUST 15, 1941
Boston Red Sox defeat Washington Senators

Again, Joe Cronin is the victim of shenanigans-this time from his former team. A steady drizzle began falling at Griffith Stadium in the fifth inning, but it wasn’t until the eighth, with Washington leading 6-3, that the rain became heavy enough for umpire George Pipgras to order a delay. However, when Pipgras requested that the field be covered, he found the Griffith Stadium grounds crew had gone AWOL; the umpires could not find them anywhere.

Soon the rain let up enough that Senators pitcher Alex Carrasquel returned to the mound to warm up, but the rain picked up again and Pipgras ordered the teams back to their dugouts. After 40 minutes, Pipgras re­-emerged, stuck his toe in the muddy baseline, and declared the field unplayable. It was an official game, with Washington the winner, but Cronin wasn’t going to stand for it. He filed a protest, claiming that the Senators were negligent in not covering the field during the rain delay.

Once more Will Harridge came down on the side of Cronin. On August 27, Harridge overturned Pipgras’ decision and ruled the game forfeited to Boston. He said the rules stipulated that the home team grounds crew must be available at all times.

As expected, Senators’ owner (and Cronin’s father­ in-law) Calvin Griffith disagreed vehemently. “The Washington club got a bad deal from the umpires,” Griffith argued. “Their report to Harridge said that (Senators’ manager) Bucky Harris refused to order the groundskeeper to cover the field when the game was stopped on account of rain. The umpires never ordered Harris to get the field covered, so how could he refuse?”

Griffith was also peeved that Harridge had not consulted with anyone from the Senators’ organization before issuing his ruling. No matter, despite the appeals of Griffith and the Cleveland Indians (who were fighting the Red Sox for second place in the AL), Harridge refused to reconsider, and on September 6 declared the issue closed.

POLO GROUNDS, SEPTEMBER 26, 1942
Boston Braves defeat New York Giants

A look at the stats from Warren Spahn’s debut season of 1942 reveals something weird. No wins, no losses, one complete game. It’s not a typo. Spahn, making just his second career start, faced the Giants in a meaningless game on the next-to-last day of the season. Fewer than 3,000 people paid their way into the Polo Grounds that afternoon, but 11,000 kids got into the game free by contributing to the Giants’ scrap metal drive in support of the allied war effort.

Spahn didn’t pitch very well, allowing five runs and ten hits, while walking five over the first seven innings. As Spahn and his Boston teammates emerged from the dugout for the bottom of the eighth, hordes of children, for no discernible reason, poured out of the stands and onto the field. James P. Dawson of the New York Times described the scene as a “maelstrom—a hopeless, tangled, confused mass running helter­ skelter all over the field.”

Umpires Ziggy Sears and Tommy Dunn waded into the Giants’ dugout, called the press box, and ordered an announcement be made that the game was in danger of being forfeited, but the warning was barely audible above the din. What had been a 5-2 New York lead turned into a forfeit loss. All statistics counted, except that there was no winning or losing pitcher; thus, the quirk in Spahn’s record. Piled high outside the Polo Grounds was 56 tons of scrap metal—including the hulk of a broken-down car.

SHIBE PARK, AUGUST 21, 1949
New York Giants defeat Philadelphia Phillies

In the second game of a doubleheader, the Giants led the Phillies 4-2 in the ninth inning. New York’s Joe Lafata hit a line drive to center field, where Richie Ashburn made a tumbling attempt at a shoestring catch. Ashburn thought he made a clean catch. Phillies pitcher Schoolboy Rowe insisted that third base umpire Lee Ballanfant made an out call. But second base umpire George Barr ruled a trap. Willard Marshall scored, Lafata ended up with a double, and Ashburn flipped out.

As “Whitey” raced in to argue, Phillie fans in the bleachers showered the field with bottles and assorted produce items. Although pleas from the public address announcer to stop the barrage were answered with boos, the fans seemed to run out of both ammunition and anger after about 10 minutes. For a moment peace and sanity threatened Shibe Park. But as Bill Rigney stepped into the batter’s box to resume play, the fusillade began anew; one deadeye splattered home plate umpire Al Barlick’s leg with a tomato, while two other fans took aim at Ballanfant with a bottle and a piece of fruit.

After a short conference with his crewmates, Barlick waived his arms, forfeiting the game to the Giants. “I had to think of the safety of everyone,” Barlick insisted. “There was nothing else for me to do.” Philadelphia manager Eddie Sawyer didn’t see it quite that way. “It was a stupid decision by the umpire. But they’re the boss on the field, so there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Sawyer, who later called it the worst day of his baseball career, said the whole mess could have been avoided had the umpires just gotten it right in the first place. He couldn’t understand why neither Barlick nor Ballanfant stepped forward to overrule the call. “Barr was the only one in the park who didn’t see Ashburn catch the ball.”

Philadelphia’s finest arrested two men for their part in the riot. One was fined $25; the other-a 54-year-old man-had his case dismissed for lack of evidence. Police were unable to track down one rubber-armed miscreant who, according to witnesses, launched at least 100 bottles relayed to him by a small but industrious group of young women. The following day, Philadelphia Athletics’ assistant treasurer Connie Mack, Jr. announced that Shibe Park vendors would follow the custom observed at most other major league parks and pour all bottled drinks into cups before serving them to fans.

SPORTSMAN’S PARK, JULY 19, 1954
Philadelphia Phillies defeat St. Louis Cardinals

Terry Moore had spent most of his adult life as a St. Louis Cardinal—first as a smooth, graceful center fielder from 1935 to 1948, then as a coach in 1949-52. So, when Cardinal manager Eddie Stanky fired Moore following the 1952 season, it was understandable that Moore didn’t take it well. “When he loses a ball game, he acts more like a nine-year-old than a man.” Moore said of Stanky.

Moore’s resentment festered until the two met as opposing managers a year and a half later. Moore, a scout for the Phillies following his exile from St. Louis, had been named Philadelphia’s skipper just a few days earlier. A photograph in the Philadelphia Inquirer that showed the two men cordially discussing the ground rules prior to the series opener belied the lingering ill will between them. “If there is one man in baseball I want to beat, it is Stanky,” Moore confessed. Phillies general manager Roy Hamey razzed Moore, requesting, “If you are going to sock Stanky, at least wait until the game is over.” Unfortunately, that was too much to ask.

The Cardinals-Phillies doubleheader on July 19, 1954, was a long, hot one played in 100-degree heat. A thunderstorm delayed the first game for almost 90 minutes but didn’t do much to cool either temperature or tempers. The Phillies led St. Louis 8-1 in the fifth inning of game two with dusk approaching. The Cardinal organization believed NL rules prohibited teams from turning on the lights after a game had already begun, but that was a misinterpretation. They could have turned the lights on; but apparently no one realized it, including the umpires.

So Stanky began to stall, hoping darkness would arrive before it became an official game. Cardinal pitcher Cot Deal, in an apparent attempt to drag things out, began to miss the strike zone by a suspiciously wide margin. After one pitch came high and tight on Philadelphia’s combustible first baseman, Earl Torgeson, umpire Babe Pinelli walked to the mound to warn Deal about any further delaying tactics. Pinelli returned to home plate to find Torgeson nose to nose with St. Louis catcher Sal Yvars. (Torgeson and Yvars had a history. In 1952, Torgeson accused Yvars of smashing one of his bats. So, to even things up, he smashed Yvars’ face, opening a gash above the catcher’s right eye.) Fists were flying within seconds.

As the benches cleared, Moore was one of the first to reach the home plate area. “I thought it looked like trouble,” Moore said, “and I tried to get in there to stop it.” He grabbed Yvars and pulled him away from Torgeson. Stanky then sneaked up on Moore and wrestled him to ground. Bad idea. This just gave Moore the opportunity to pummel his nemesis at close range. Stanky emerged from the brawl with a scratch on his neck and a mouse under his eye. In the meantime, though, the clock was ticking.

After the umpires and local police restored order, Stanky reemerged from the dugout, walked ever so slowly to the mound, and called in Torn Poholsky to relieve Deal. As Poholsky moseyed his way in from the bullpen, Pinelli decided he had seen enough of the delay tactics and declared the game forfeited to Philadelphia. The St. Louis fans, already fed up with Stanky because of the team’s poor record, actually cheered Pinelli’s decision.

National League president Warren Giles suspended Stanky for five days and fined him $100. Moore escaped without punishment. Although he initially blamed the fight on Moore’s inflammatory pre-game remarks, Stanky was repentant after a tongue-lashing from Giles. “I know I have embarrassed and hurt the St. Louis people, baseball nationally, my reputation as a baseball man … and Gussie Busch and the St. Louis Cardinals front office. I know that I owe all concerned a public apology.”

RFK STADIUM, SEPTEMBER 30, 1971
New York Yankees defeat Washington Senators

A crowd of nearly 15,000 paid (and 4,000 more crashed the gates) to say goodbye to baseball in Washington and good riddance to Bob Short. Short purchased the Senators for $8 million in 1969, whereupon the fortunes of the team (and eventually the team itself) went south. The 1969 Senators excited the city, going 86-76 under rookie manager Ted Williams. But trades for washed-up veterans Denny McLain and Curt Flood were disastrous, and by 1971 the team was headed for a 96-loss season. All this, and the league’s highest ticket prices to boot. Then in September of ’71, Short announced that he was deserting Washington and moving his franchise to Arlington, Texas.

Dozens of anti-Short banners appeared (and disappeared) throughout the night. One sign reading “Bob Short Fan Club” hung in front of an empty section of the stands. Fans in the left field upper deck dangled two long, thin sheets, upon which were scrawled the words “Short Stinks.” Soon after security confiscated that banner, another one sprang up which read “Short Still Stinks;’ much to the delight of the crowd. Fans who hung Short in effigy from the upper deck earned a standing ovation. A grieving 14-year-old boy lugged a homemade dummy of Short through the stands. “I’ve been coming out here most of my life,” he sobbed to a reporter.

Despite the palpable bitterness, the crowd was generally well behaved, and they enjoyed an exciting game. Washington trailed 5-1 in the sixth inning when Frank Howard, the lone superstar in the history of this second incarnation of the Senators, hammered a Mike Kekich pitch for a home run. It was his 26th home run of the season and his 237th as a Senator.

As he crossed home plate, Howard, suspecting that Kekich had been grooving hittable fastballs to him all evening, thanked catcher Thurman Munson, who replied, “You still had to hit it.” The crowd cheered for three minutes as Howard, who had once vowed to never tip his cap to RFK Stadium fans, made two tearful curtain calls. “This is utopia,” Howard declared. “This is the greatest thrill of my life.”

Howard’s home run sparked a big Senators’ rally. Washington took a 7-5 lead in the seventh inning, but that’s when people started to get loopy. The start of the eighth was delayed when three fans ran onto the field to shake the players’ hands. Once those fans were removed, 50 or 60 more followed, while chants of “We Want Short” rang out.

By the ninth inning, Williams was concerned for his players’ safety. He removed Howard from the game and ordered his relievers to abandon the bullpen and head for the dugout. After Joe Grzenda retired the first two hitters in the top of the ninth, fans stormed the field en masse, running the bases, digging up home plate, and ravaging the scoreboard for souvenirs.

Howard didn’t really blame them. “This was their night,” he insisted. “They’ve been hurt. They’re disillusioned. They’re the greatest fans in the world.” Umpire Jim Honochick waited three minutes, saw that the situation was hopeless, and declared the forfeit, ending nearly a century of baseball in the nation’s capital.

CLEVELAND MUNICIPAL STADIUM, JUNE 4, 1974
Texas Rangers defeat Cleveland Indians

By the mid 1970s, boorish fan behavior had become increasingly commonplace, mirroring the increased tension and violence in American society at large. Houston outfielder Bob Gallagher observed, “It seems like everybody in the outfield stands is either young kids or drunk old men.”

Strangely, many major league teams seemed to be OK with that; ridiculously cheap beer promotions were not uncommon during this era, as clubs tried to give blue-collar fans an incentive to spend some money at the ballpark at a time when many of those folks were having their pocketbooks squeezed by inflation and unemployment. Cleveland’s “Ten Cent Beer Night” in 1974 was one such promotion that degenerated into a Hobbesian nightmare of drunkenness and violence.

The game between the Rangers and Indians would have been intense even if everyone in the park had been drinking tea. A week earlier, the two teams had brawled in Texas. Cleveland players had to be restrained from going into the stands after fans who were pelting them with beer and screaming obscenities. Prior to the June 4 game, Cleveland fans booed Texas manager Billy Martin, who antagonized the crowd further by doffing his cap and blowing kisses.

The crowd of 25,134 was double what Indians management was expecting. The team had more security on hand than usual, but the size of that force—two city police officers and 50 stadium security personnel—still was nowhere near enough to keep things under control. Fans started running onto the field in the third inning. One woman tried to kiss home plate umpire Larry McCoy. A streaker dashed through the outfield in the sixth inning.

But as the game wore on and more alcohol was consumed (the Indians sold 60-65,000 10-ounce cups of beer that night) the mood of the stadium changed from somewhat goofy to downright nasty. In the seventh inning, someone threw a string of firecrackers in front of the Rangers’ bullpen, prompting the relievers to flee for the safety of the dugout. The Indians’ relievers did the same the next half-inning.

In the ninth inning, the Indians rallied from a 5-3 deficit and had the winning run on third base with two outs. Martin figured his team was in trouble. “My pitcher [Steve Foucault] was scared stiff and I couldn’t warm up anybody in the bullpen.” It was at that point that a couple of fans jumped the fence and attacked Texas right fielder Jeff Burroughs. Burroughs tried to run away, then fought them off. But by that time more fans had surrounded Burroughs. Players from both teams, some armed with bats, rushed to Burroughs’ aid as hundreds of fans streamed onto the field.

The scene resembled a giant street fight. Once Burroughs was out of immediate danger, the players and umpires raced for their clubhouses amidst a hailstorm of debris and waves of angry drunks. One fan lobbed a metal chair from the stands, knocking Cleveland pitcher Tom Hilgendorf silly. Umpire Nestor Chylak suffered a lacerated hand when someone else threw a chair at him. Texas pitching coach Art Fowler, sightless in his left eye, was punched in the right eye and tumbled blindly down the dugout steps. Someone also punched Foucault in the face.

Chylak and Martin both claimed they saw people with knives. Cleveland’s Dick Bosman, who was with Washington in 1971 during that season-ending forfeit, said the two crowds were very different. “The fans in Washington were not mean . . . they were only looking for mementos. This was a mean, ugly, frightening crowd.” Martin concurred, predicting, “That’s probably the closest we’ll come to seeing someone get killed in the game of baseball.” Martin telephoned Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte in the clubhouse to thank him for his team’s help, just days after their players were at each other’s throats. A security guard summed it up best, “Just about everyone that came out on the field seemed drunk or out of his mind.” Nine people were arrested; seven were hospitalized.

Indians executive Ted Bonda perhaps was the only person who was not completely appalled. He criticized Chylak for forfeiting the game without warning the fans first and declared that future ten cent beer nights would go on as scheduled. “They are our fans,” Bonda insisted. ”I’m not going to chase them away.” Bonda explained that at one point before things got out of hand, he was thinking about asking Gaylord Perry to address the fans and urge them to behave themselves, but instead he did nothing and left the park before the ninth-inning riot (or, as Bonda called it, the “public demonstration”) began.

EXHIBITION STADIUM, SEPTEMBER 15, 1977
Toronto Blue Jays defeat Baltimore Orioles

With his history of umpire baiting, dirt kicking, and cap throwing, it is only fitting that Baltimore manager Earl Weaver would eventually find himself at the center of a forfeit. The Orioles, just 2½ games behind New York in the American League East, trailed the Blue Jays 4-0 in the bottom of the fifth inning when Weaver decided to make an issue of a tarpaulin covering the Blue Jays’ bullpen mound outside the left field line.

The night before, his left fielder Andres Mora had stumbled on the tarp as he went into foul territory to make a catch. Weaver, purportedly concerned about the safety of his players, wanted umpire Marty Springstead’s crew to order the Jays to remove the tarp, despite the steady rain that was falling. “That is part of the playing field,” contended Weaver. “Whoever heard of covering up part of the field while the game is going on? If a guy slips out there and hurts his leg, how am I gonna feel?”

Springstead requested that the grounds crew take away the cinder blocks that were holding down the tarp, and fold back the tarp a bit, but he claimed he lacked the authority to tell them to completely remove it. “There is nothing in the rulebook that says such a thing is illegal,” said Springstead. Not satisfied, Weaver waved his arm and ordered his team off the field. The Orioles hastily convened in the clubhouse and decided to stand behind their manager. “I think Earl did the right thing,” said shortstop Mark Belanger. “I’d say we were just about unanimous in our decision.” After a five-minute wait, Springstead, whose crew had had two major rows with Weaver earlier in the year, forfeited the game to the Blue Jays.

The Orioles were indignant. General manager Hank Peters said he would make his opinion known to American League president Lee MacPhail. “They order banners and pieces of clothing removed from the railings all the time. It appears that they went out of their way to find a reason [to forfeit the game].” Losing pitcher Ross Grimsley called the forfeit “a big bunch of garbage. The umpires have got it in for Weaver.” “Marty’s just trying to stick it to Earl,” echoed Belanger. The Blue Jays were a bit huffy themselves. “I don’t understand [Weaver’s] thinking,” said manager Roy Hartsfield. “What about the 25 guys who have a chance to win the championship? Was he thinking about them?”

Actually, yes, he was. The next day Weaver admitted that he thought his team would have a better chance to win if the American League would overrule the umpires and order the teams to finish the game the following week, when the Blue Jays were scheduled to come to Baltimore. “We might not have gotten to bat again, it was raining so hard. Their pitcher [Jim Clancy] was throwing BBs and the wind was blowing in at 30 miles per hour. A chance is all we’ve got, but it’s a better chance than we had of winning last night.”

Something else that Weaver might have been kicking around in his head was Toronto’s airport curfew; no planes could depart after 11:00 P.M. Had they missed that deadline, the team would have been forced to bus to Niagara Falls, NY, and from there fly back to Baltimore for the start of a key series against Boston the next day. Ultimately, MacPhail upheld the forfeit, and the Orioles finished the year 97-64, tied for second with the Red Sox but still 2½ games behind the Yankees.

COMISKEY PARK, JULY 12, 1979
Detroit Tigers defeat Chicago White Sox

The mother of all forfeits. Disco Demolition Night was the brainchild of Mike Veeck, son of White Sox owner Bill Veeck, and Steve Dahl, a pudgy, bespectacled 25-year-old Chicago disc jockey. All summer Dahl had been pretending to blow up disco records on the air at WLUP, and his listeners loved it. So, on this night, between games of a twi-night doubleheader, he would do it for real. Fans could get into the park for 98¢ (WLUP was at 97.9 FM) if they brought along a disco record for Dahl to use as kindling.

Why so much hatred for disco? Dahl despised “the whole white three-piece suit thing. It was about 18-24 year-old disenfranchised rock guys like myself not wanting to have to look like that to get laid.” A 17-year-old girl at the game echoed those feelings with an amazing observation. “This is our generation’s cause,” she squealed. Nonetheless, Dahl initially was worried about how Disco Demolition Night would go over. “I was dreading the whole thing;” he recalled. “It seemed to me if I drew 5,000 people I would be parading around in a helmet and blowing up records in what looked like an empty stadium.”

Not to worry. As game time neared, Chicago Sun­ Times columnist Bill Gleason could barely believe his eyes. “I saw the tremendous surge of people coming from the north on Shields Avenue and I realized this was going to be a very, very large crowd. I have become convinced that other than the night that Satchel Paige made his [first major league] pitching appearance that this was the largest crowd at Comiskey Park [history].”

It is impossible to get an accurate read on that because so many people sneaked into the park. According to White Sox reliever Ed Farmer, “I remember outside the park someone had parked a Camara, and people were jumping on the roof and hood of the Camaro to jump through some ventilation holes in the outfield wall behind the ballpark and they would come in that way.” A fan said, “It looked like medieval times when they go after a castle, pouring over a wall.”

Conservative estimates put attendance at 50,000, with maybe another 10,000 people milling around outside. It didn’t look like the typical baseball crowd. “I thought, most of these people have never seen a baseball game before and probably will never see one again,” said Gleason. It didn’t smell like the typical baseball crowd, either. “Marijuana was all over the place,” remembered announcer Jimmy Piersall.

Apparently, it never occurred to anyone that record albums could be used as missiles. “The first problem,” Dahl said, “is that they stopped collecting the albums when they had enough to fill the bin [to be blown up on the field].” Throughout the first game, fans sailed the records onto the field like Frisbees.

“Each inning I went out to pitch, the disco records were being thrown from different parts of the upper deck and lower deck,” said Farmer. “One flew by me and landed over toward third; another one rolled to me and I caught it with my glove on the mound.”

Although according to Chicago’s Rusty Torres, who was a member of the Indians during the Municipal Stadium forfeit five years earlier, “This wasn’t as bad. In Cleveland, they were throwing lighters and bottles.”

The Tigers won the opener 4-1. Then Dahl took the field and blew up his records amidst a downpour of cherry bombs and beer. “It was like nothing you ever saw,” marveled one fan. “Bottle rockets, M-80s, all sorts of [stuff] whizzing over your head.”

Then, with the records blown to smithereens, about 5,000-7,000 fans spilled out of the stands. The people on the field weren’t especially violent. They dislodged home plate, tore up a patch of grass in front of the mound, and one guy drenched the fans who remained in their seats with an industrial-size hose, but the worst injury was a broken ankle. It was about a half hour before helmeted police arrived, but by that time most of the people had gotten bored and had left on their own. About 1,000 people remained on the field, and the cops cleared them away in about five minutes. Thirty-nine people were arrested.

The condition of the field wasn’t that bad, all things considered. But Tiger manager Sparky Anderson refused to play the second game because of the excessive delay. Umpire Dave Phillips conferred with player representatives Torres and John Hiller, then called the second game. Initially there was talk that the game would be made up later that weekend as part of a doubleheader, but MacPhail jumped in and awarded the Tigers the victory via forfeit. Bill Veeck declared that he was, “amazed, shocked, and chagrined. I think the grounds for forfeiting are specious at best. . . . It’s true there was some sod missing. Otherwise, nothing was wrong.”

Gleason’s postmortem column made it sound as if Disco Demolition Night was one of the lesser-known signs of the Apocalypse. But time has provided him with some perspective. ”As the years pass, it becomes remembered less with bitterness and more with laughter. It really was one of the epic events of baseball history. It will be remembered forever.”

DODGER STADIUM, AUGUST 10, 1995
St. Louis Cardinals defeat Los Angeles Dodgers

A year removed from the player strike that wiped out the 1994 season, the relationship between players and fans was still sour. Fans in both Pittsburgh and Detroit sent their teams running for cover on Opening Day, showering the field with debris; a loudmouthed Yankee fan almost came to blows with the Angels’ Chili Davis; and Milwaukee fans and Toronto third baseman Ed Sprague, in a kindergarten flashback, threw chunks of tobacco at one another.

But it was the normally mellow fans of Los Angeles who were responsible for their team forfeiting a game. A sellout crowd of 53,361 came out to watch the Dodgers try to move into a first-place tie with Colorado in the National League West. It was also a promotional night for the Dodgers; fans were handed souvenir baseballs as they passed through the turnstiles. That would turn out to be a big problem.

Everything was cool until the seventh inning, when some fans began throwing their baseballs onto the field. Play resumed after a six-minute delay, but that was just a taste of what was to come. In the bottom of the eighth, with St. Louis leading 2-1, home plate umpire and crew chief Jim Quick ejected Eric Karros after the Dodger first baseman protested a called third strike that ended the inning.

In the bottom of the ninth, leadoff hitter Raul Mondesi struck out thanks to two borderline calls by Quick. Mondesi griped and he, too, was ejected. Quick was on a roll. Next to get the heave-ho was Dodger manager Tom Lasorda, who rushed to home plate to defend Mondesi. Dodger fans lost it, firing baseballs (and other stuff) from all corners of the stadium. L.A.’s Chris Gwynn, standing in the on-deck circle, was hit in the head with an apple. Cardinals’ right fielder John Mabry said, “I wasn’t too worried until a bottle of Southern Comfort flew out of the stands and hit me.” Then after Mabry was hit with a bottle of rum, “I finally asked the batboy if I could trade my hat for his helmet, but he said no, because he was in danger, too.”

The Cardinals retreated to the dugout while the fans settled down and stadium personnel cleared the field. But as the players returned to their positions and the game was set to resume, another baseball landed in center field, and Quick immediately forfeited the game to St. Louis.

As usual, fingers of blame pointed in all directions. The Cardinals blamed the Dodger fans. Reliever Tom Henke claimed the fans threw 200-300 balls onto the field in the seventh inning alone-although Dodgers’ officials countered that it was only about 200 for the entire game. The Dodgers blamed the umpires. “I don’t know how you can [forfeit the game] without giving a warning over the P.A.,” argued general manager Fred Claire. The umpires blamed Lasorda. According to first base ump Bob Davidson, “Lasorda instigated the whole damn thing by running out there, waving his fat little arms.”

Dodgers’ catcher Mike Piazza said, “I just hope and pray that forfeit doesn’t cost us.” It almost did, but the Dodgers held on and won the division by one game. Perhaps the happiest man in the whole situation? Mike Veeck. “I’ll forever be the godfather of the forfeiture,” Veeck declared. “But I finally got it off my back. [I’m] a free man.”

JAMES FORR is a long-suffering Pirate fan who lives in State College, Pennsylvania and studies consumer behavior. This is his first contribution to The National Pastime.

 

Sources

Akron Beacon Journal (online edition), November 3, 2003. Alexander, Charles. Ty Cobb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 172.

Barthel, Thomas. The Fierce Fun of Ducky Medwick. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003, pp. 122-23.

Boston Globe. September 3, 1939, p. 26; August 28, 1941, p.25.

Chicago Tribune. August 21, 1920, p. 7; April 27, 1925, p. 17;

November 12, 1952, p. B4; July 13, 1979, section 5, p. I, 3.

Cleveland Plain Dealer. June 5, 1974, p. 1-A, 6-A, 8-B, 1-G, 2- G; June 6, 1974, p. 4-F.

Deveaux, Tom. The Washington Senators, 1901-1971. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001, pp. 257-58.

James, Bill. This Time Let’s Not Eat the Bones. New York: Villard, 1989; p. 272.

Los Angeles Times. June 14, 1924, p. Bl; August 11, 1995, p. CI, C4; August 12, 1995, p. CS.

New York Herald Tribune. June 14, 1924, p. I, 10; September 27, 1942, section 3, p. 2.

New York Times. June 14, 1924, p. I; June 7, 1937, p. 23;

September 4, 1939, p. 26; September 27, 1942, p. S3;

August 22, 1949, p. I; October I, 1971, p. 49-50; September 16, 1977, p. 93.

Philadelphia Inquirer. August 21, 1920, p. 6; June 7, 1937, p.19, 21; June 8, 1937, p. 25, 28; August 28, 1941, p. 25;

August 22, 1949, p. I, 24, 26; August 23, 1949, p. I, 23; July 19, 1954, p. I, 19; July 20, 1954, pp. 21-22.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (online edition), July 11, 2004. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (online edition), July 27, 2003. Roberts, Robin and Rogers, C.Paul III.WhizKids.Philadelphia:

Temple University Press, 1996; pp. 186-87.

Sports Illustrated. October 4, 1971, p. 17; June 17, 1974, pp. 10-13; September 26, 1977, p. 64; August 21, 1995, pp. 72-73.

The Sporting News. June 10, 1937, Pg. 3, 10; September 14, 1939, pg. 2-3, 10; August 31, 1949, pg. 7; July 28, 1954, pg. 2, 5; June 22, 1974, pg. 5, 14; June 29,1974, pg. 4; October 16, 1971, pg. 34, 38; July 28, 1979, pg. 20, 36; August 21, 1995, pg. 15.

Toronto Globe and Mail. September 16, 1977, p. I, 27.

Washington Post. June 14, 1924, p. 25; September 4, 1939, p.13; September 9, 1939, p. 16; August 16, 1941, p. 12; August 31, 1941, p. XI; September 3, 1941, p. 19; September 7, 1941, p. SI; August 22, 1949, p. 8; July 19, 1954, p. 10; July 21, 1954, p. 23; October I, 1971, p. AI, DI.

www.dahl.com/memories/dd_audio.asp

www.retrosheet.org/forfeits.htm

www.rollingstone.com/news/archive