After their on-field exploits of 1961, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were sought by film producer Tom Naud for a Hollywood feature. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

Occasionally, baseball films spotlight sequences or storylines that are Florida-centric. Not surprisingly, they primarily are linked to spring training—and some even have real-world connections. Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927), for example, features the New York Yankees working out in Delano—and highlights guest appearances by Mike Donlin, Bob Meusel, Irish Meusel, and Tony Lazzeri. Big Leaguer (1953), starring Edward G. Robinson as ballplayer-turned-talent evaluator John B. “Hans” Lobert, is set in a New York Giants tryout camp in Melbourne. In Fear Strikes Out (1957), Boston Red Sox rookie Jimmy Piersall (Anthony Perkins) heads for spring training in Sarasota.

Others are fictional. Kill the Umpire (1950) stars William Bendix as an ex-ballplayer, loudmouth, and die-hard fan who resides with his family in St. Petersburg, where he sneaks off to Grapefruit League contests between the New York and St. Louis nines. Strategic Air Command (1955) toplines James Stewart as a B-29 bomber pilot-turned St. Louis Cardinals all-star third sacker who trains in St. Petersburg; in the film’s first shot, a car pulls up outside Al Lang Field, the designated “Winter Home (of the) St. Louis Cardinals.” In Major League (1989), a menagerie of has-been and never-were ballplayers shows up for Cleveland Indians’ spring training (albeit in Arizona, rather than Florida). But there is a Sunshine State connection: The snooty ex-showgirl who has just taken over team ownership schemes to move the Tribe to Florida. The city of Miami has promised her a new stadium, a Boca Raton mansion, and a Palm Beach Polo and Country Club membership. So how can she refuse?

In Fever Pitch (2005), the following dialogue is spoken between Ben (Jimmy Fallon), a Boston Red Sox fanatic, and Lindsey (Drew Barrymore), his new girlfriend:

Ben: “… every year during Easter vacation … uh, me and my friends, we go down to Florida.”

Lindsey: “You and your buddies go down to Florida for spring break? At your age?”

Ben: “No, no, no, not spring break. Spring training with the Red Sox.”

Lindsey: “Oh, you get to train with the Red Sox? Are you allowed to do that?”

Ben: “Well, we don’t actually. … We watch the games.”

Lindsey: “Aren’t those just practice games?”

Ben: “Yeah, yeah, but there’s more to it than that. We scout the players. We … we say which players they should keep … which they should get rid of.”

Lindsey: “And the Red Sox ask your opinion?”

Ben: “Well, not yet …”

Ben heads south and, later on, Lindsey tells him: “I saw you on ESPN.” He responds: “Oh! We looked like morons, didn’t we?” And his excuse: “Well, it’s very hot, you know, it’s Florida.”

Of all baseball films with Sunshine State/spring training connections, however, the one that most typifies the Grapefruit League world is not one of the first-division sports yarns. Far from it. For indeed, the best that can be said about Safe at Home! is that it is an innocuous kiddie film—and despite its spotlight on the New York Yankees, one need not wrap oneself up in pinstripe pride to savor it. The film (which was released in 1962) is a must-see if only because it stars the M&M boys themselves, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. The previous season, of course, Maris had whacked 61 dingers to top Babe Ruth’s single-season record, while Mantle chimed in with 54 round-trippers. Unlike Slide, Kelly, Slide and countless other films which feature real-life ballplayers in cameo appearances, these genuine American heroes not only shag flies and smash fastballs but also are called upon to act.

Safe at Home! is the saga of Hutch Lawton (Bryan Russell), a motherless, baseball-mad ten-year-old Little Leaguer who has moved to Palms, Florida, with his father, Ken (Don Collier), a struggling charter boat operator. Henry, a fellow Little Leaguer and patronizing banker’s son, harasses Hutch because the elder Lawton is immersed in his work and unable to watch the team practice. Hutch responds by bragging that his dad not only is more baseball-savvy than any other parent but is best buddies with New York Yankees players—and specifically Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. The youngster even claims that Ken Lawton is “Roger Maris’s best friend in the whole South.”

Hutch of course is dumbfounded upon being pressured to bring the ballplayers to a league dinner. What will he do? “I’m gonna go see ’em,” he declares. “That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna ask ’em to help. They just gotta say yes.” So the youngster sneaks off to Fort Lauderdale, then the Yankees’ spring training home, by hiding in the back of a fish truck operated by a friend’s father. Upon his arrival, he sneaks into the Mick’s hotel room and Fort Lauderdale Stadium; showers in the same stall where the ballplayers clean up; falls asleep in the team’s locker room while garbed in Maris’s jersey and employing Mantle’s as a blanket; and is confronted by Bill Turner (William Frawley), a quick-tempered yet sympathetic Yankees coach. As any young fan might, Hutch imagines himself a flychaser who is cheered on as he smacks base hits and makes circus catches. Plus, he endlessly sighs, “Mickey Mantle…Roger Maris…Gosh…Gee….” In the tradition of happy-ever-after Hollywood finales, Hutch realizes that fibbing is bad business, Ken learns that his son requires attention and understanding, and Hutch and his teammates get to visit Fort Lauderdale and spend quality time with Mantle, Maris, and their teammates.

Robert Creamer, writing in Sports Illustrated, observed that Safe at Home! “was designed for cheap, quick filming, a [spring training 1962] release date and a fast buck.” The previous summer, as Mantle and Maris were smashing dingers, Tom Naud, the film’s eventual producer and story co-author, conjured up the idea of starring them onscreen. He contacted Frank Scott, the ballplayers’ agent, and a deal quickly was struck. In the original storyline, Mantle and Maris were to play deaf-and-dumb siblings—perhaps because they could not read lines believably—but the concept was nixed by Scott. What then emerged was the scenario that was used in the film and, by November 1961, all was in place for the spring shooting schedule.1 The New York Times added that Safe at Home! was produced by Columbia Pictures “on a comparatively modest budget” of “about $1,000,000,” with Mantle and Maris “dividing a guaranty of $50,000.”2

On February 7, 1962, the Times reported that the duo was “heading for Fort Lauderdale … but not for baseball. For the next few weeks they will be here strictly as actors, appearing in the Columbia picture ‘Safe At Home!’ Scenes will be shot at the ball park and at the club’s quarters in the Yankee Clipper Hotel.”3 A week later, it was announced that star hurler Whitey Ford and skipper Ralph Houk had been added to the cast. The paper also noted a bit of off-camera drama: “…during the filming of the preliminary shots at near-by Pompano Lake, there was quite a to-do when one of the camera men, Irving Lippman, lost, or thought he had lost, a valuable ring. Mantle sailed right in and spent some fifteen minutes trying to find it in the loose dirt. When the cameraman returned to his hotel, he found the ring on top of his dresser. He was all apologies but Mickey assured him he should ‘think nothing of it. The exercise did me good.’”4

On February 15, the Times ran a feature on the production. “The Yankees went Hollywood today, and for more than four hours, Manager Ralph Houk’s well-regulated training camp became a merry shambles,” wrote John Drebinger. The scribe noted that the otherwise “obliging” Houk, certainly a novice at moviemaking protocol, gave the film’s director, Walter Doniger, full control of the ball park. However, “by the time the field was well-cluttered with sound trucks, cameras, ladders, wires and whatnot, Houk felt he had obliged enough.” The manager also was ill-prepared for the presence of the make-up artist, who was to groom him for his on-camera emoting. “For the Major is still a rugged military man,” noted Drebinger, “and the rouge and powder made him squirm. Especially when he found himself in the center of the astonished stares of the players.” Adding to Houk’s frustration was that his few lines with Bill Frawley had to be re-shot eight times.5

Ten days later, Drebinger penned another piece on the progress of the shooting. He observed that, according to Doniger and Tom Naud, Mantle and Maris “are not performing as actors but as themselves. Their lines are what they would say as ballplayers.” Drebinger was quick to disagree, however, given that “the jargon of the dugout could be a trifle rough.” But he added: “Mantle and Maris are doing well, so far. Mantle, in particular, seems to be enjoying himself. He laughs easily and takes everything in stride. Asked whether he preferred being an actor to a ballplayer he replied: ‘Why, this life is a breeze. Shucks, in this business when you make a mistake you do it over and over and over until you do it right. Around the ball field when you misjudge a fly ball or let a third strike whiz by they don’t give you another crack at it.’”6

Drebinger reported that Doniger “insists that Mantle, Maris and the other Yanks in the picture, including coach Johnny Neun and some twenty rookies who provide background, have been a most agreeable surprise. ‘They’ve really amazed me,’ he says, ‘by their poise and the relaxed manner in which they handle themselves, especially in the outdoor scenes with spectators gaping at them from all sides. Even professional actors sometimes feel a bit self-conscious working under such conditions. But ballplayers, I guess from the nature of their business, are so accustomed to playing before a crowd that it doesn’t bother them in the least’.” (Drebinger also noted that one of the junior ballplayers in the cast was none other than “freckle-faced David Mantle, Mickey’s 6-year-old son.”)7

In retrospect, it is no surprise that Mantle and particularly Maris do not give Oscar-caliber performances in Safe at Home! What matters is who they are: clean-cut all-American champions being marketed as models for young American boys. And they are not the sole Yankees spouting dialogue. Whitey Ford speaks a line: “Hey Rog, Mickey. Houk wants to see you right away.” Ralph Houk has several interchanges: “Hey, Bill, can I see you for a minute. … What’s that youngster doing on the bench? … Keep on running. Run harder than that …” (For sure, the Safe at Home! screenplay was not penned by Ernest Hemingway.) And as the Yankees train, the names “Tom” and “Phil” are detectable. Could they be “Tresh” and “Linz”? When somebody cries “Pepi,” he has to be citing Joe Pepitone.

Actor William Frawley, far left, is shown in this publicity still with various members of the cast and crew of Safe at Home, including Mantle and Maris.

Also of note in Safe at Home! is the presence of Frawley, a lifelong baseball fan whose Coach Bill is a variation of the crabby but endearing characters he played on I Love Lucy and My Three Sons, his hit TV series. In one scene, the coach and Mantle and Maris pass the hours away from spring practice by playing Scrabble in a hotel room—and M&M gently tease him on his ineptitude at spelling. “Who says so?” Bill growls. “Webster,” is Mantle’s answer. “What club’s he with?” the coach responds. At one point, Bill dubs Mantle and Maris (who then were as celebrated as any big leaguer) a “bunch of mangy rookies.”

Less than two months after its filming, Safe at Home! was released theatrically to coincide with the start of the 1962 season. Its premiere was no star-studded Hollywood event; the film opened on a double bill with Chubby Checker’s Don’t Knock the Twist, another Hollywood product attempting to cash in on the era’s zeitgeist. Both were combined in their advertising copy, which was headlined: “2 GREAT HITS ON ONE GRAND SLAM TWISTIN’ PROGRAM,” with Safe at Home! featuring “The great M&M playing themselves! Big Buddies to the luckiest kid in the world!” Given Frawley’s popularity, he was spotlighted for playing “the tough, gruff, lovable coach.”

Unsurprisingly, the film’s reviews were at best tepid. New York Times critic Eugene Archer summarized the majority opinion by declaring: “Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris came up to bat in unfamiliar surroundings yesterday and went down swinging,” adding that Safe at Home! was “a whimsical little children’s film” and “minor league production.”8 Additionally, in order to be cast in Safe at Home! Mantle and Maris were afforded membership in the Screen Actors Guild, which made them eligible to garner Best Actor Academy Award nominations. But they were not members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which barred them from voting in the Oscar race. “They must achieve distinction as actors,” explained an unnamed Academy expert, adding: “It is not felt that their distinction is in the field of acting.”9

Almost four decades after the release of Safe at Home!, I interviewed a number of the film’s participants while researching Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of William Frawley and Vivian Vance, his I Love Lucy co-star. One was Tom Naud, who explained that Frawley “loved being cast in (the film). He loved calling Ralph, Mickey, Roger, and Whitey by their first names.” At the same time, Frawley only palled around with the stars. “I wouldn’t have been invited to talk baseball with him,” recalled Jim Bouton, then a Yankees rookie, who was one of the extras. “That was for Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and the big guys, like Whitey Ford. I was just happy to be asked to be an extra in the movie, for which I got paid the munificent sum of $50.”10 (According to the New York Times, the rookies “had [each] received $100 for romping on the field.”)11

As for Mantle and Maris, Walter Doniger offered a take on the ballplayers that was far-removed from what he told the press during the shoot. Doniger described them as “pretty arrogant and ego-driven.” To convince them to respond to his directorial cues, he determined that “the best thing I could do would be to pretend total ignorance of baseball, and not know who they were. One time, I said to them, ‘I’d like in this scene for you to run not counterclockwise but clockwise around the bases. ‘They looked at me and said, ‘You can’t do that in baseball.’” Doniger added: “I would deliberately get their names reversed, so that they kept trying to prove to me that they were important. I thought the best thing to do would be to make them ordinary people to me, and not big league stars and world heroes. So I did that, and it seemed to work.’”12

Whether the M&M boys were model citizens during the shoot, or haughty superstars, or something in between, what matters today is that Safe at Home!, while no Pride of the Yankees or 61*, does offer a nostalgic snapshot of a moment in time. (And speaking of 61*, wouldn’t Billy Crystal—famed Yankees fan who celebrated his sixtieth birthday by DH-ing in a 2008 spring training game in Tampa—have made a perfect Hutch Lawton?)

ROB EDELMAN teaches film history courses at the University at Albany. He is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web, and is co-author (with his wife, Audrey Kupferberg) of Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of I Love Lucy ’s Vivian Vance and famed baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. He is a film commentator on WAMC (Northeast) Public Radio and a contributing editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. He is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game and has written for Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, Total Baseball, Baseball in the Classroom, Memories and Dreams, and NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture. His essay on early baseball films appears on the DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899–1926, and he is an interviewee on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural.

SAFE AT HOME!
CREDITS

DIRECTOR: Walter Doniger.
PRODUCER: Tom Naud.
SCREENPLAY: Robert Dillion, based on a story by Naud and Steve Ritch.
MUSIC: Van Alexander.
A NAUD-HAMILBURG PRODUCTION.
CAST: Mickey Mantle (Himself); Roger Maris (Himself); William Frawley (Bill Turner); Patricia Barry (Johanna Price);
Don Collier (Ken Lawton); Eugene Iglesias (Mr. Torres); Flip Mark (Henry); Bryan Russell (Hutch Lawton); Scott Lane (Mike Torres); Charles G. Martin (Henry’s Father); Ralph Houk (Himself); Whitey Ford (Himself).

NOTE: Approximately twenty Yankee rookies and other team personnel appear unbilled. Cast as one of the young ballplayers, also unbilled, is David Mantle, Mickey’s son.

Notes

1. Robert Creamer, “Mantle and Maris in the Movies.” Sports Illustrated, April 2, 1962, 96–108.

2. John Drebinger, “Teamwork on the Citrus Circuit.” New York Times, February 25, 1962, X7.

3. John Drebinger, “Toothpick Bat: Weighty Topic in Yanks’ Camp.” New York Times, February 7, 1962, 59.

4. John Drebinger, “Two Infielders Figure in Plans.” New York Times, February 14, 1962, 29.

5. John Drebinger, “Houk Gets Some Coaching, Hollywood Style.” New York Times, February 15, 1962, 32.

6. John Drebinger, “Teamwork on the Citrus Circuit.” New York Times, February 25, 1962, X7.

7. Drebinger, “Teamwork on the Citrus Circuit.”

8. Eugene Archer, “Double Bill at Neighborhood Theatres.” New York Times, April 14, 1962, 14.

9. Murray Schumach, “Mantle, Maris in Oscar Race.” New York Times, February 16, 1963, 5

10. Rob Edelman, Audrey Kupferberg. Meet the Mertzes (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999), 204–205.

11. John Drebinger, “Houk Gets Some Coaching, Hollywood Style.” New York Times, February 15, 1962, 32.

12. Rob Edelman, Audrey Kupferberg. Meet the Mertzes. (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999, 204–205.)

The impact of what Brosnan accomplished through his writing has been lost over the passage of time. Modern readers accustomed to blogs, Facebook, reality shows, and the like might have difficulty relating to how sporting events and players were presented to the public well into the twentieth century.

For most baseball fans in the mid-1950s the ability to gain an understanding of the inner workings of the game was quite restricted. Box scores recorded events but offered little in the way of underlying player perspectives. Accounts of games or players in the sports sections of newspapers, magazine articles, and occasional player biographies tended toward the bland, superficial, or worshipful. This commonality of theme was reinforced by the fact that frequently writers specializing in one of these mediums frequently wrote for all of them. If a baseball player (or most any sports figure for that matter) shared his life story or offered commentary, it most often came about in a ghost-written effort or reflected the expertise of a professional writer.

A case in point is found in the first serious publication on the life of Stan Musial, appearing in 1964, a year after his playing career ended. Titled Stan Musial: “The Man’s” Own Story, it contained the telling tag line “As told to Bob Broeg.”2 Broeg essentially wrote a book more or less reflecting the same adoring perspective he offered in years of covering Musial’s career while a regular contributor to The Sporting News. It was the traditional narrative of an underprivileged youth struggling to make good, deferential in nature, tracing Musial’s career but from a distance, never approaching a sense of intimacy. 

These types of literary efforts revealed little beyond antiseptic numbers or milestone achievements. This sterile approach to chronicling baseball and sports in general began to change in the early 1960s as a tone of realism emerged. One agent of transformation came with publication of The Long Season in 1960, which chronicled the experiences of a journeyman pitcher during a season with a mediocre team. It was not ghost-written or “as told to”; it contained the honest feelings of pitcher Jim Brosnan’s struggle to survive in a fiercely competitive environment.

How Brosnan’s effort, in a diary format contrasted with then-followed sportswriting axioms could be illustrated by comparing his entries with those of newspaper reporting on any given game he described. A case in point can be shown by comparing news coverage of his inaugural pitching effort for the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field with how he described the same game in The Long Season. The contest, played on June 24, 1959, was important to Brosnan. He had been traded to the Reds just a few weeks before; he needed to look good before the hometown crowd.    

The July 1, 1959, issue of The Sporting News contained a box score for the match, between Cincinnati and the Chicago Cubs. The final score shows a 5-0 win for Cincinnati. Brosnan, did well, throwing a complete-game shutout, allowing the Cubs just four singles and two walks while striking out seven batters. His opponent, Dick Drott, by way of contrast, did not last out the first inning. Drott gave up three hits, a walk, and four runs before being removed from the game.

Frank Robinson got three hits, one a double. Ed Bailey and Gus Bell drove in two runs apiece, Bailey on his fifth home run of the year. The game lasted 2 hours, 14 minutes and was played before 6,510 fans. The Sporting News’s brief explanation of the game and box score recounted these details as well as the fact that Brosnan had completed his first game since September 1, 1956, when he was with the Cubs.3

The Chicago Tribune’s coverage of its home team had a more extended account of the contest, explaining various plays as well as offering a brief aside on Brosnan having formerly pitched for the Cubs and noting his recent trade to the Reds from St. Louis.4 Nothing in either of these articles from the player’s perspective was shared; it was typical of the times. These separate reports of the game pretty much summed up what fans came to expect in the way of information on major-league baseball.   

After the season ended, however, with publication of The Long Season, a much different rendering and decidedly untraditional perspective of baseball emerged on the June 24 game. His entry for June 24 was but one of a series of penned by Brosnan spanning spring training through the last day of the season.

Recollections of the contest commenced with off-field concerns for family dynamics:

“How many tickets do you want?” I (Brosnan) said into the phone. … That’s lotta box seats. … I guess I can get ’em. The way we been going I don’t think we’re gonna pack Crosley Field. … Mom coming with you tonight?… She’s never seen me pitch at a major league park, has she? …”5

Even though this was Brosnan’s first appearance as a Red at Crosley Field, the pressure of performing well before his new teammates at home was momentarily supplanted by the need for tickets to the game.

Once out on the field, Brosnan’s challenge of coming up with tickets was overtaken by a new concern; a blister on the third finger of his pitching hand had popped while he warmed up. Reds manager Mayo Smith asked if Brosnan could make it. Offering the customary bravado of an athlete, Brosnan reassured Smith, “I’ll give it a try. It bothers my breaking stuff mostly. I’ll lay off the curve and use my slider.”6

The game commenced inauspiciously for Brosnan. A hit and a walk, just one out, and Brosnan found himself facing Cubs shortstop Ernie Banks who just happened to have 67 RBIs, the most in the majors.7 With the game at a crucial point in the top of the first, what was Brosnan thinking? Not what casual observers of the game might think. A mental soliloquy commenced on the mound.

“Wonder if Mother is here, yet.” Then almost as an afterthought, “I can’t take a chance throwing Banks a breaking ball away and down. That’s a good double-play pitch but if I make a slight mistake I’m behind three runs.”   

Brosnan ruminates on catcher Ed Bailey’s call to throw a slider. “Bailey must like my slide ball. (Most of the pitcher’s control on breaking balls lies in his fingers. I had a bad finger. I must have poor breaking stuff. Q.E.D. Well, Bailey probably never heard of Q.E.D., so why not give him what he wants?)”8 Brosnan might have been the only major-league ballplayer to have expressed doubt in Latin when deciding on what pitch to throw.       

His mother, pitch selection, the state of his finger, and a Latin phrase. All these pass through his mind while one of the most dangerous hitters in the game waits at the plate.

Brosnan throws a slider, Banks pops out to Bailey, and after the next batter lines to left, Brosnan has survived the first inning. All outs were made on sliders.

Reds manager Mayo Smith greets him in the dugout. “That’s your bad inning, Jimmy. Your fast ball’s alive.” Brosnan says to himself, “I’d only thrown one (fastball).” With that terse four-word passage, Brosnan shared his estimation of Smith’s powers of perception and by extension, his confidence in Smith’s management capabilities.9

All these mental gyrations and it was only the first inning. Brosnan’s commentary on the game, while involving a few key plays, did not focus on pitching strategy or the overall game but on his finger. It was bleeding. The following innings dealt with the challenge to minimize bleeding.

“Doc (Doc Anderson, the team’s trainer), let’s go to work. This finger’s bleeding. You got any collodion we can put on it?”10 Anderson goes in to action. “This’ll do the trick, my boy. Just let old Doc take care of your finger. You take care of the batters.” Anderson kept medicating the finger each inning but it quickly wore off, leaving specks of blood on the ball.

As the game went on, Brosnan developed a rhythm. “But for the most part my arm worked like a well oiled machine. The batter came to the plate. My experience classified him. My mind told my arm what to do. And it did it. It seldom happens precisely that way.”11

So it went the rest of the way until Cubs batter Dale Long came to the plate with two outs in the ninth. Brosnan, the bleeding momentarily under control, was now into the mental game. “Why not experiment a little? Think I’ll throw him a change-of-pace. Defy the book.” Long grounded to first and Brosnan had a shutout. Robinson made the final out at first and stuck the ball into his back pocket. “Oh no, Robby,” I said. “That one’s mine.”12    

Brosnan’s shutout involved an almost meaningless contest between two teams going nowhere. Chicago was then in fifth place; Cincinnati in seventh. This rather mundane contest did not concern a turning point in their respective fortunes as the two teams ended the year tied for fifth in the eight-team National League.

It was but one game yet his thoughts, ranging from questioning his pitches to the Q.E.D. reference to being a “well oiled machine,” were in microcosm a reflection on the roller-coaster ride his confidence took all year long.

Brosnan’s experiences during this game were totally foreign to what the larger body of fans had come to expect in understanding the game. At its core, while sharing numerous experiences and touching on many themes, The Long Season resonated with readers because it tapped into something all have felt at one time or another: a crisis of confidence. It went beyond the bravado conventionally shared on sports pages, in baseball books, or in magazines. Players fall into slumps, are sent to the minors or released. The Long Season observes baseball immortal Stan Musial experiencing his first sub-.300 season. Reds teammate Frank Thomas, one of the more prolific hitters in 1958, endures a yearlong slump. Marv Grissom and Sal Maglie, two veteran pitchers with 20 years’ experience between them, find they can no longer perform; their careers end. Uncertainty is always a presence.

For Brosnan particularly, his midyear trade from St. Louis to Cincinnati, jarred belief in himself. It affected his family, a consideration beyond the public’s consciousness. His wife, Anne, hearing he has been traded from the Cardinals, cries, “Oh no! Oh God … not that. I’ll never be able to drive from Chicago to Cincinnati.” She then asks, “Who did they trade you for?” Brosnan replies, “Jeffcoat. Straight swap I guess.” “Jeffcoat!” Anne responds, “Couldn’t they get more for you than that? Oh honey, they just wanted to get rid of you.”13

In clearing up loose ends with the Cardinals, he met with general manager Bing Devine and asked why he was traded to the Reds. Devine responded, “Solly (Hemus, manager of the Cardinals) has said that he just doesn’t seem to be able to get the work out of you.”14 Hemus’s perspective on Brosnan’s ability disturbs him. Over a month later Brosnan in talking with Reds bullpen coach Clyde King speaks of this. “Hemus didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. But I’ve been thinking. With the Cardinals, I was beginning to lose confidence in my pitching ability, and over here (with the Reds) I’ve proved that I can do just as good a job as ever. So my guilt feelings about Hemus must have had a direct effect on my pitching.”15

Part of what helped Brosnan gain confidence came with Fred Hutchinson’s replacement of Mayo Smith as manager. He helped guide Brosnan through the metamorphosis from starter to relief pitcher.

Brosnan’s shutout of the Cubs was an aberration. It was the seventh complete game in what were then 38 career starts. He never pitched a complete game again.

After another start in which he was pulled earlier than he thought proper, Brosnan confronted Hutchinson. Feeling he was somewhat less than a complete pitcher based on a dismal record of finishing games, Brosnan was set right by his manager, who recognized the true value of his talent. “You don’t think you were pitching good ball up till then, do you? I didn’t. You’ve got good stuff and you’re a pretty good pitcher. I may use you in the bullpen now because I know that you can do that job for me. Not every pitcher can. As for you, don’t worry about it. You’ll get plenty of work.”16   

Hutchinson was right. Brosnan could do the job coming out of the bullpen, a fact proved over the next few seasons. But those days were in the future.

How Brosnan dealt with the trade, pitching triumphs such as his effort on June 24, or games where his effort made for an early exit, proved the essence of his book. His everyday struggles connected with followers of the game. And made The Long Season one of the most popular pieces of baseball writing.

Notes 

1 Mark Armour, “Jim Brosnan,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b15e9d74.

2 Bob Broeg, Stan Musial: “The Man’s” Own Story as Told to Bob Broeg (New York: Doubleday, 1964).

3 “National League,” The Sporting News, July 1, 1959: 26.

4 Edward Prell, “4 Run Salvo Routs Drott in 1st Inning,” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1959: D1. Brosnan was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to Cincinnati on June 8, 1959.

5 Jim Brosnan, The Long Season (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1960), 183.

6 Brosnan, The Long Season, 184.

7 Banks would end the season hitting .304 with 45 home runs and 143 RBIs, the most in the majors. His performance won him a second consecutive Most Valuable Player award.

8 Q.E.D. A Latin term, quod erat demonstrandum essentially translates to “which was to be proved.” https://macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/q-e-d.

9 Less than two weeks later, Smith was fired and replaced by Fred Hutchinson.

10 Collodion is a clear, syrupy liquid compound used to close small wounds and cuts.

11 Brosnan, The Long Season, 186.

12 Brosnan, The Pennant Race (New York: Harper, 1962), 184-187, covers the June 24 game.

13 Brosnan, The Long Season, 160. Hal Jeffcoat’s major-league career lasted just 12 more games.

14 Brosnan, The Long Season, 171.

15 Brosnan, The Long Season, 206-207.

16 Brosnan, The Long Season, 210.

Of course, fielding position and especially batting position can change daily for some, and players change numbers throughout their careers, so I set out to document the number of games for each player where their three numbers (uniform, batting order, and fielding position) were the same, in the history of baseball. I limited this study to the players in the starting lineup, at their starting fielding position. Pinch hitters, relief pitchers, defensive replacements, and fielding position changes were not considered. I looked at only regular season games for the ninety-year period of 1929–2018. The convention of players wearing numbers began in earnest in 1929, after a few brief experiments, and was completely phased in by the mid-1930s.

This is a very unlikely feat for pitchers. In fact, according to Retrosheet, only one starting pitcher batted leadoff in this period: Cesar Tovar, on September 22, 1968, the day he duplicated Bert Campaneris’s feat of playing all nine positions in a game. He wasn’t wearing number one, however, thus no pitcher (or anyone wearing number one or anyone batting leadoff) has ever been Cubic. Of course, we can also eliminate players wearing a number greater than nine, or less than one, and Designated Hitters.

I employed the Uniform Number Tracker database at the Baseball-Reference website. To identify games in which a player’s batting order position matched his fielding position, I used Retrosheet’s Game Log files, which provide starting lineups and initial fielding positions. Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference are wonderful resources and I am grateful that they make their information available for download free of charge. It would be beneficial, however, if there were a standard for player identification. For instance, Hank Aaron is identified as “aaroh101” by Retrosheet and “aaronha01” by Baseball-Reference (and by Sean Lahman’s Baseball Database, another wonderful free resource). Checking to ensure that the files from the two sources were merged correctly added a lot of time and created an opportunity for errors. Cases like the two players named Abraham Nunez, who played concurrently, required careful handling.

Methodology

My results are not perfectly correct, though they are close as possible under the constraints. Here is why I could not achieve perfection:

1. I relied on Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference exclusively as the source of the data for this study (and again, I am forever grateful to them). Any errors or incomplete information, however, in either source, could have created errors in my results.
2. I already mentioned that the two sources use different IDs for players, creating opportunities for errors.
3. Baseball-Reference provides the numbers a player wore by year and team. It does not provide daily detail. If a player wore more than one number for the same team in the same year, I had no way to tell at what point during the season that the change was made. For instance, in 1972, Bobby Grich started the year wearing number 16, which he had worn since he first reached the majors in 1970. At some point during the year, he switched to number 3, which he wore for the rest of his Oriole career. I considered these cases to be indeterminate and removed them, since I could not verify what uniform number such players wore on a particular day in those years.
4. No source that I am aware of tracks numbers worn by players to commemorate special occasions, such as Jackie Robinson Day, and I made no attempt to identify such days and the players who wore special numbers for a single game.
5. The final source of errors is me. I attempted to automate this to as great an extent as possible but could not do so entirely. Baseball-Reference’s database provided player, team, uniform number, and year, but the downloaded data were not in a usable tabular format. I managed to reformat them into a table, but without the team. I merged the two source files by player and year. Then, for each player who appeared to satisfy the cubic criteria, I looked up their Baseball-Reference page to check that the player actually wore the right number for the right team. For instance, in 1979, Oscar Gamble wore number 7 with the Rangers and number 17 with the Yankees. His only games that year in left field, batting seventh, came with the Yankees, however. Thus, I had to remove those games. I spent a great deal of time checking these cases, but I can’t be sure that errors weren’t made.

Confucius said, “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” No, I don’t think he was talking about baseball.

Results by Position

There have been 10,180 instances of a cubic player-game. This works out to be about 113 times per year. Only 335 players have played a cubic game.

As I’m sure you have realized, the frequency of this is vastly different by number. Looking at it through the lens of fielding position, it is far more likely to be accomplished by an infielder than an outfielder; and far more likely for an outfielder than a catcher, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Cubic Player-Games by Position Category

Breaking it down further, we see in Table 2 that among infielders, the feat is far more likely to be accomplished by fielders at the corners. In the outfield, the frequency declines as we move from left to right. Cubic right fielders are relatively new, the first one appeared in 1978. On June 1, 1920, right fielder Sammy Vick batted ninth in the Yankee lineup (pitcher Babe Ruth batted fourth). It wasn’t until the Designated Hitter rule was established that a right fielder would bat ninth again.

Table 2. Cubic Player-Games by Position

Of those 63 right field player-games, 61 occurred in the American League. Perhaps as National League managers bat their pitchers eighth, we’ll see more cubic NL right fielders, joining Ryan McGuire and Brandon Nimmo.

When we look at the 335 cubic players by position, in Table 3, we see:

Table 3. Cubic Players by Position Category

Table 4 provides the position detail.

Table 4. Cubic Players by Position

Careful readers will note that outfielders account for only about 10% of cubic player-games (Table 2), yet about 43% of the cubic players have been outfielders (Table 4). Infielders, and particularly first and third basemen, exhibit the opposite relationship. It’s not unusual for a left fielder to bat seventh, for instance, in a particular game. But left fielders who bat seventh don’t tend to have long careers. We will see that cubic records are driven by a few prolific players, and they are infielders, generally first or third basemen.

Results Over Time

I had a hunch that this feat has become more unusual, for three reasons.

1. When uniform numbers were first assigned, they were often assigned based on the player’s position in the batting order, thus creating a systemic link between two of the three figures.
2. Single digit numbers are being retired. Since numbers are seldom un-retired, this factor will have an increasingly strong effect as time goes on. The Yankees have retired numbers one through nine, ensuring that no Yankee will ever play a cubic game again. The last Yankee to do so was Tony Fernandez in 1995.
3. The use of set lineups seems to have become extinct, making it more unlikely for an individual player to amass a high number of cubic games (and perhaps also leading to more cubic players).

To check if this is actually true, I grouped the ninety years in the study into nine ten-year periods: 1929–38, 1939–48, etc. As I expected, I found that the number of cubic player-games, and ratio of cubic player-games to total games played (which is a more meaningful measurement as it normalizes for expansion and a longer regular season schedule), had been steadily declining. However, the trend has reversed and the frequency has increased in the two most recent decades, as shown in Table 5. I believe that the decade 1989–98 is the outlier. We’ve reached a relatively steady state of about 3% to 4% of games played over that last fifty years. By chance, in that one ten-year period, it seldom happened. Prolific cubic players, like the immortals, don’t come around on a regular schedule.

Table 5. Cubic Player-Games by Decade

Table 6 provides the number of cubic players in each decade.

Table 6. Cubic Players by Decade

Table 7 is a matrix of the number of cubic player-games by decade and number. It’s interesting that most of the occurrences for first basemen and shortstops happened in the earlier years, while most of the occurrences for second basemen (due to one player who we will meet in the next paragraph) and outfielders happened in more recent years.

Table 7. Cubic Player-Games by Decade and Number

Player Records

Brandon Phillips is the all-time leader in career cubic games played. Table 8 provides the top ten.

Table 8. Top 10 Leaders in Career Cubic Games

Appendix A shows the top ten players in lifetime cubic games at each number. In Appendix B you will find the top ten players in cubic games in each decade.

Pinky Higgins established the career mark in 1937 and held the record for thirty-three years, until Brooks Robinson eclipsed him in 1970. Robinson held the record for forty-six years until Brandon Phillips passed him in 2016.

The record for most cubic games in a single season is held by Bill Terry. In 1934 he played 153 cubic games (every game that the Giants played that year). The top ten seasons are shown in Table 9.

Table 9. Top 10 Single Seasons

Table 10 provides the single season records for each number.

Table 10. Single Season Leaders for each Number

Brooks Robinson holds the record for most years leading all of baseball: nine. Brandon Phillips led in eight years. No one else led in more than four years.

Brooks Robinson also holds the record for most years with at least one cubic game: seventeen. Harmon Killebrew had eleven such years, and Brandon Phillips had ten. No one else had more than eight.

Franchise Records

Table 11 provides the total player-games for each franchise. I’ve grouped the oldest sixteen and the fourteen later expansion teams separately.

Table 11. Number of Cubic Player-Games for each Franchise

It wasn’t surprising to me that Yankees are last among the original franchises, given their proclivity for retiring single digit numbers. Incidentally, Babe Ruth was the first cubic Yankee, in 1931. It was his only cubic game.

For no systemic reason, 57% of the cubic player-games have been recorded by teams that were in the American League at the time. However, in the last four decades, 76% of the incidences have been by National League teams. As you’ve seen, one prolific cubic player can leave an imprint on the totals. As shown in Table 8, the top ten most prolific players account for 44% of all the cubic player-games.

Table 12 lists the leaders for each franchise. Notice that Brandon Phillips, the Reds second baseman for eleven years (2006–2016), and Brooks Robinson, the Orioles third baseman for more than two decades (1955–1977), are far ahead of everyone else. Pinky Higgins, next on the all-time list, amassed cubic games for the Athletics and Red Sox. Mickey Vernon, fourth on the list, tallied cubic games for the Indians and Senators.

Table 12. All-time Franchise Leaders

Anomalies and Hall of Famers

There are nine players who have played a cubic game at more than one position, as shown in Table 13.

Table 13. Players who have played a Cubic Game at more than One Position

There have been many players who played a cubic game for more than one team, but Hank Majeski is the only one who did it with four different clubs. Mark DeRosa and David DeJesus did it with three teams.

Many players have played a cubic game in each league.

Matt Duffy leads all active players with twenty-seven lifetime cubic games, again, through the 2018 season. Eduardo Escobar is a close second with twenty-five. So, Brandon Phillips’s career record is safe for a while.

Nineteen Hall of Famers have played at least one cubic game, as shown in Table 14. Interestingly, many of them played cubic games at a position other than the one for which they are most renowned. I expect that Adrian Beltre and Albert Pujols will be added to this list.

Table 14. Cubic Games by Hall of Famers

There have been many games where multiple players were cubic. For instance, the last one in the period occurred on April 9, 2018, the Rays versus the White Sox, both third baseman, Matt Duffy and Yolmer Sanchez, batted fifth and wore five. The record for most cubic players in a game is three, accomplished sixteen times. The most recent occurrence was a game on April 16, 1969, Baltimore at Boston. The three players were Brooks Robinson (5) for the Orioles, and George Scott (5) and Rico Petrocelli (6) for the Red Sox.

The record for most cubic players for one team in a game is also three. On July 20, 1949, in a game in which he singled, doubled, and was hit by a pitch in five plate appearances, the Indians all-star center fielder Larry Doby was thrown out trying to steal home with the bases loaded and no outs. Doby was fined and benched for the next five games by player-manager Lou Boudreau.1 In those five games, Cleveland’s lineup included Mickey Vernon batting third, Joe Gordon batting clean-up, and Lou Boudreau batting fifth. These are the only five games where as many as three teammates were cubic.

Coming Home

I suppose Babe Ruth was the greatest of all cubic players, but special mention should go to football star D. J. Dozier. He played just one season in the big leagues and appeared in 25 games, yet he tallied five cubic games in his 14 starts.

Fewer than 2% of all major league players have played even one cubic game. The 335 who have form a special fraternity. A few are enshrined in Cooperstown; others didn’t have much more than a cup of coffee. All are bound by this special trait, having played the game in perfect harmony.

RANDY KLIPSTEIN has been a SABR member for thirty-five years. A Yankee fan, he lives happily in Dobbs Ferry, New York, with his wife Lisa, a Red Sox fan. Randy hopes to see an alphabetical batting order. Contact Randy at rbk65@optonline.net.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the peer reviewers who made this a better article and welcomes requests for more information, such as a complete listing of cubic players.

Notes

1 “Doby Fined By Boudreau After Boner,” Evening Independent, July 21, 1949.

Appendix A: Top 10 players in lifetime cubic games played at each number

Appendix B: Top 10 players in lifetime cubic games played in each decade

Satchel Paige, shown here in Miami uniform, was brought to the team by executive vice president Bill Veeck, for whom he had pitched in the major leagues with Cleveland and St. Louis. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

At the end of the 1956 season, writer Oscar Fraley observed that Satchel Paige was “a rounders robot who reportedly inspired Abner Doubleday to invent baseball.”1 That was after Paige had—at age 50—gone 11–4 with two shutouts, 13 saves, and a 1.86 ERA for the Miami Marlins of the International League.2 Paige spent three seasons with the Marlins, which were both successful and controversial.

The story of how, quite by accident, the International League wound up in Miami was recounted by Bill Veeck some years ago. In 1955, Syracuse had drawn 85,191 fans, by far the least of any Triple-A team. Their owner wanted out. One night, at a restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, the owner heard Sid Salomon say, “If I could buy a club, I wouldn’t hesitate to move it to Miami.” Soon thereafter, Salomon had himself a ball club, and hired his close friend Veeck to run the organization.3

Veeck, as the Marlins’ Executive Vice-President, signed Satchel Paige to pitch for the team. Satchel had first pitched for Veeck with the Indians in 1948, and had also pitched for him with the St. Louis Browns from 1951 through 1953. When the Browns moved on to Baltimore in 1954, both Veeck and Paige had joined the ranks of the unemployed. For two years, Paige pitched in exhibitions and did a stint with the Kansas City Monarchs, but was out of Organized Baseball.

The hiatus ended on Opening Day 1956, as 8,806 fans came to Miami Stadium to see the new team in town complete with the usual Veeck trimmings. Paige was supposed to arrive at the mound via helicopter prior to the first pitch, but things got a bit disorganized. He arrived in a cloud of dust after the first inning, when the helicopter landed on the infield dirt near second base, and Paige assumed a seat in a rocking chair by his team’s dugout.4 The experience resulted in Paige concluding, “Veeck better think up something new, cause I ain’t gonna ride in no more of them things.”5 Although he did not appear in the first game, it was not long until he did see action and start contributing to his team’s success.

His first appearance was on April 22, the sixth game of the season, and he needed a wakeup call. He came in to relieve in the seventh inning of the second game of a doubleheader. The first game had gone 18 innings and more than seven hours had elapsed, leaving very few of the announced crowd of 3,486 around to see Paige. His wild pitch advanced runners to second and third, but then he bore down and got the game’s final batter Mel Nelson to hit a comebacker for the final out.6 The 3–2 win broke a string of four losses for the Marlins.

After three successful relief appearances, including two saves, he had his first start of the season on April 29. Against the Montreal Royals, in front of a crowd of 5,536, the largest since Opening Day, he pitched a seven-inning complete game shutout in the second game of a doubleheader for his first win of the season, allowing only four singles. He threw only 83 pitches, but was not allowed to use his hesitation pitch.7 Subsequently, league President Frank Shaughnessy ruled that Paige could throw the pitch in the International League. The complete game was the first of the season by a Marlins pitcher.

He was pitching mostly out of the bullpen and sometimes in bad luck. On May 26, he entered the game in the seventh inning after three Miami hurlers had not been able to solve the bats in the Richmond lineup. As noted by Shelley Rolfe in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “They laughed when Ol’ Satch shuffled to the mound but after a while the (Richmond) Vees and the crowd discovered Paige was no laughing matter. It wasn’t that the Vees failed to threaten Satch, it was just that Paige knew what to do every time they did, and he did it in his own good time.”8 The game went into the 13th inning. Paige struck out eight batters in his seven innings of work, but Richmond pushed across a run in the bottom of the 13th for the win, bringing Paige’s record to 1–2 with three saves.

A big crowd of 6,895 came to the Miami ballpark on Memorial Day and got a double-dose of Satchel. In the first game, he entered the game with two outs in the fifth inning and allowed neither a hit nor a run over the balance of the seven-inning game for his second win. In the second game, he recorded the final out for his fourth save of the season.

Signed on initially to help the attendance figures, Paige was quickly becoming the pre-eminent reliever in the league. On June 24, in the second game of a doubleheader against Toronto he played the stopper role. The Maple Leafs had started the series in Miami by defeating the Marlins 13–1 and 12–0, and Miami starter Frank Snyder had yielded three runs in the first inning. Paige came into the game with two outs and went the rest of the way. The Marlins came from behind to win, Paige’s record stood at 5–2 with seven saves, and the Marlins were four games above .500. His ERA stood at 1.50, and he even had contributed with a single in three at-bats on June 24.9

Veeck was always quick with a promotion to spur attendance, and on July 11, old age was on the program as the ageless Satchel (four days past his 50th birthday), was matched up against Connie Marrero, the 45-year-old former Washington hurler, now pitching with Havana. Close to 6,000 spectators looked on as Paige pitched the first six innings, striking out eight, and Miami won, 1–0, for Satchel’s sixth win of the season.

Top-flight entertainment in the form of Clay Poe’s Greater Miami Goodwill party brought a record 11,836 through the turnstiles three days later. The Vagabonds, Dagmar, Micki Marlo, and Pat Manville took center stage during the 45-minute extravaganza.

Satchel was thriving in the warm weather of Miami and pitched his best ball on Sunday afternoons, capturing six of his first eight wins on Sundays. After being sidelined by a bad cold in the early part of July, he made sure that on subsequent trips to the northern stretches of the International League, he would be prepared. He would wear four sweatshirts and a rubber shirt beneath his uniform. “I’m never going to be cold again when I pitch in Buffalo, Toronto, or Montreal.”10

The Marlins were in first place for a brief moment on July 29, after Satchel hurled six scoreless innings in relief as his team won 5–4 in 13 innings against Montreal, but hit a tough stretch in August.

On August 7, the Marlins moved their show to the Orange Bowl and packed in an all-time minor league record 57,713 fans to witness Paige’s fourth start of the season. Paige not only was the pitching star that night, but his long double to deep left-center field scored three runs as Miami defeated Columbus 6–2. Proceeds from the contest, which featured four bands in an entertainment extravaganza, went to charity.11 Satchel struck out five batters and scattered seven hits in 72⁄3 innings of work for his ninth win of the season. Having lost five straight, Miami was in danger of dropping out of contention before Paige stopped the losing streak.

Paige’s finest performance came on the evening of August 13 when he defeated Rochester, yielding but one hit for his tenth win of the season. He struck out three batters and walked none in his seven-inning masterpiece. The only hit of the game was a fourth-inning single off the bat of Tommy Burgess. In his first 31 games, Paige was 10–3 with 10 saves and had a 1.50 ERA. In 90 innings, he had struck out 64 and walked only 20.

His longest outing of the season came on August 19 against Buffalo. He started but was not very effective, yielding three runs over the first six innings. But he was able to put his team up 5-3 with a two-run double in the bottom of the sixth. After the sixth inning, there was a two hour and eleven minute rain delay, but Satch remained in the game, lasting 82⁄3 innings as the Marlins won 5–4.12

Satchel led his team in appearances with 37 as they finished third in the league with an 80–71 record. In games in which Paige appeared, the Marlins were 27–10. The third-place finish earned the Marlins a place in the playoffs against Rochester. Down two games to none, the Marlins staged a come-from-behind rally to win the third game of the playoffs. Paige set the side down in order in the eighth inning and was credited with the win. Miami lost the series to Rochester in five games.

When 1957 rolled around, Satch showed up for spring training in Stuart, Florida, ready to go. On arrival, he said, “I’ve already contacted my Indian friend who makes my special snake oil. And I hear Stuart is a fine place for spring training…good fishing, I mean.”13 It was still 1957 and still very much the Jim Crow South. When he showed up, he was informed that the Marlins were a bit short-handed in the pitching department and he might need to be used as a starter on Opening Day. His response was vintage Paige. “I’ll be ready to pitch if I don’t have any miseries between now and then. So don’t you go running me and getting my feet tired.”14

Satchel Paige would spend three seasons with Miami. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

One year in Miami was enough for Veeck and he arranged the sale of the team to Miami media mogul George Storer prior to the 1957 season. Showmanship was still on the agenda for the April 17 opener against Toronto, courtesy of impresario Ernie Seiler. Entertainment was provided by, among others, Preacher Rollo and his Dixieland Saints, and during the National Anthem, bombs burst in air as fireworks illuminated the sky beyond the left-field fence. And then the teams took to the field and engaged in a marathon that lasted well into the night before being halted at 12:50AM by curfew. After 16 innings and four hours and 49 minutes, the score was tied 3–3.15

Paige did not pitch in the opener, but he had developed a new pitch for his noted arsenal. He called it the Hum Bug Pitch. “It hums and makes the batters buggy. It has nothing to do with my dipsy-doodle pitch, my hesitation pitch, or any of the others.”16

A well-rested Paige pitched for the first time on April 28 in the second game of a Sunday doubleheader. He went the entire seven innings, scattering six hits and striking out nine as Miami defeated Buffalo and Luke Easter, 7–1. The Marlins were in first place and would stay there through the first two weeks of May. Then the wheels fell off. The team’s bats went to sleep and each of the pitchers suffered. By June 18, Satch’s record stood at 3–3. In his three losses, he had allowed only eight runs in 22 innings, losing by scores of 2–0, 3–0, and 3–2. The team had fallen to seventh place and was 10 games below .500.

By the time Satch’s 51st birthday rolled around, the team had risen to sixth place and they were playing in Columbus. It was the fifth inning on July 7 and the Marlins were clinging to a one run lead. Starting pitcher Earl Hunsinger was tired and reliever Dick Bunker had been ineffective. In strolled Paige and he went the rest of the way to record his fifth win of the season.

The team could not establish anything in the way of momentum and during the last week of August, the bats went into the deep freeze again, and once more Satch was the victim of shutout pitching. On August 29, he was on the short end as the Marlins lost to Columbus 3-0. He went all seven innings in the first game of a doubleheader only to be shut out for the fourth time in his eight losses. His record stood at 8–8 with six saves.

On Labor Day, games were scheduled for both morning and afternoon and Paige took to the mound in the opener. In the bottom of the fifth, Miami scored three runs but nobody was really noticing. By then 15 Havana batters had come up, and 15 Havana batters had been retired. Satchel had a perfecto going and he kept it going until the eighth inning when with two outs, Elio Chacón singled for the first Havana hit. Paige went the whole nine innings, giving up three hits while striking out eight for the 3–0 win, his ninth of the season.

The Marlins went into the last week of the season challenging for a playoff spot. They won 10 of their last 14 games, including two wins by Paige to edge out Rochester for a playoff berth. In the playoffs, the Marlins won the first round, defeating Toronto in six games, but fell to Buffalo in five games for the league championship. Against Buffalo, Paige pitched seven innings in the opener, losing 2–0, and in the finale, he lost 7–1.

Nevertheless, it was another good season for Paige who went 10–8 during the regular season with a 2.42 ERA in 119 innings.

Early in the 1958 season, Paige was on the wrong side of the law when he was arrested and convicted for speeding and having an improper driver’s license. Satch found the judge, Charles H. Snowden, to be a fan. The Judge deferred the 20-day jail sentence until after the season, and put forth some criteria that could lessen the sentence. Paige would receive one day off for each win, be credited for one day off for each run scored, and be credited for one day off for each time he struck out Luke Easter.17

That season, the Marlins got off to a bad start, losing 18 of their first 27 games before putting together a seven-game winning streak. Paige tossed a three-hitter against Columbus to win the final game of the run.

However, Satch was losing more than he was winning in the early going. Through June 8, he was only 3–4 with two saves and the way he was going, it looked as though he would be the guest of the City of Miami at season’s end. The team was not doing well either. At the close of business on June 11, they were in seventh place, nine games behind the league leaders, and Paige found himself on the disabled list. He missed 14 of his team’s games but came back to win his fourth decision of the season, defeating Montreal 4–1.

As June turned into July, the Marlins made their way toward the first division and Paige saw more action. He made seven appearances between June 29 and July 13, going 4–1 with one save as the Marlins climbed over .500. On July 10, he entered a game with two on and one out in the eighth inning. He recorded the final five outs to save a 5–2 win over Havana.

As good as Satchel was on the field, his off-the-field behavior was irking management. He missed flights and was unreliable in terms of showing up for work. On July 27, he had shut out Toronto 3–0, in a nine inning complete game. But less than ten days later, things took a turn for the worse as Paige feuded with management, mostly over money. The pitcher was suspended indefinitely on August 5. At the time, his record was 9–7 with three saves and an ERA of 3.09.18 Indefinitely was 12 days. He came back to defeat Buffalo 6–1 for his 10th win, but the Marlins were left fighting for the last playoff spot going into the last two weeks of the season.

Sometimes, one’s reputation can cause problems and such was the case late in the season when the Marlins were flying back to Miami from Havana at the end of August. Satchel showed up 15 minutes before takeoff only to find out that his seat had been sold to someone else, the airline thinking he would be a no-show. He went back on a later flight.19

On September 1, Miami played the first of a four game set against Columbus. They needed to sweep Columbus and Havana in their last seven games to move past Columbus in the standings for the final playoff spot. Paige started for Miami against Columbus and allowed only two runs, but his teammates were unable to score and there would be no more starts for Satchel Paige. He pitched a scoreless inning in relief in his team’s finale on September 6 to end the season with a 10–10 record and a 3.04 ERA.

He didn’t quite get the credit he needed to stay out of jail for the preseason traffic violation, but the judge was in a forgiving mood and gave Satch credit for effort.20

At season’s end, Paige hung up his spikes, and it was made official when he was released by the Marlins in April 1959. Although there would be barnstorming and brief appearances, often as publicity stunts, over the next several years, including a five-game stint with Portland of the Pacific Coast League in 1961 and his last major-league appearance with Kansas City in 1965, it was over. As Satchel said, “I’m not runnin’ out of baseball. It’s just that mabba baseball is runnin’ out of Satchel.”21

ALAN COHEN is a retired insurance underwriter who has been a member of SABR since 2011. He has written more than 30 biographies for SABR’s BioProject, and has contributed to 13 SABR books. He serves as Vice President-Treasurer of SABR’s Connecticut Smoky Joe Wood Chapter and contributed to the chapter’s recently published “100: The 100 Year Journey of a Baseball Journeyman—Mike Sandlock.” His first game story, “Baseball’s Longest Day – May 31, 1964,” has been followed by several others. His ongoing research into the Hearst Sandlot Classic (1946–1965), an annual youth All-Star game which launched the careers of 88 major-league players, first appeared in the Fall 2013 Baseball Research Journal, and has been followed with a poster presentation at the SABR Convention in Chicago. He serves as the datacaster (stringer) for the Hartford Yard Goats of the Class-AA Eastern League. A native of Long Island, he now resides in West Hartford, Connecticut, with his wife Frances, two cats and two dogs.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the endnotes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and the following:

Fraley, Oscar. “Ageless Satchel Paige Called ‘Most Wondrous Performer,’” Panama City Herald, August 15, 1956:10

Paige, Satchel with David Lipman. Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever (New York, Grove Press, 1961).

Notes

1. Oscar Fraley, Panama City News, November 14, 1956, 8.

2. Saves were not an official statistic at the time. Total based on author’s calculations.

3. Bill Veeck with Ed Linn, Veeck as in Wreck (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1962):311.

4. Jimmy Burns, “8,806 at Marlins’ Game See Fireworks and Delivery of Satchmo by Helicopter,” The Sporting News, April 25, 1956:27.

5. Oscar Ruhl. “88-year battery—Satch and McCullough,” The Sporting News, December 19, 1956:15.

6. George Beahon, “Wings Top Miami, 10–6, In 18 Innings, Then Lose,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 23, 1956:18. (The Sporting News recorded a passed ball rather than wild pitch.)

7. “Ol’ Satch Hurls Miami to 3–0 Shutout Victory,” Boston Traveler, April 30, 1956:24.

8. Shelley Rolfe, Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 27, 1956:B1.

9. Burns, “Satch Aging, He has 1.50 ERA and He’s Still Hittin’,” The Sporting News, July 4, 1956:30.

10.. Burns, “Satch Miami’s Sunday Ace—Enjoys Afternoon Work,” The Sporting News, August 8, 1956:28.

11. Burns, “Marlins Set 57,713 Gate High at Orange Bowl Show,” The Sporting News, August 15, 1956:17.

12. Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 20, 1956:19.

13. Burns, “Satchel Checks on Snake Oil, He’s all Set for Spring Drills,” The Sporting News, March 13, 1957:36.

14. Burns, “Miami Marlins All Smiles—Satchel Paige Shows Up,” The Sporting News, April 3, 1957:31.

15. Burns, “Seiler Whips Up ‘Spectacular’ at Marlin Opener,” The Sporting News, April 24, 1957:27.

16. The Sporting News, April 24, 1957:27.

17. “Satch Can Pitch Himself out of Jam,” Fort Pierce News-Tribune, April 24, 1958: 1.

18. Burns, “Paige Suspended by Miami to Climax a Hectic Interlude,” The Sporting News, August 13, 1958:36.

19. Burns, The Sporting News, September 3, 1958:32.

20. The Sporting News, January 7, 1959:27.

21. “Legendary Satch Turns to Movies,” Fort Pierce News-Tribune, September 30, 1958:5.

In Game Seven of the 2014 World Series, Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants entered the contest in the fifth inning with his team leading the Kansas City Royals, 3–2. Bumgarner, working on two days’ rest after a complete-game shutout victory over the Royals in game five, proceeded to pitch five scoreless innings to secure the championship and electrify the baseball world.1 “Now he belongs to history,” wrote Tyler Kepner in the next morning’s New York Times. Kepner went on to praise Bumgarner for “his excellence in shouldering a workload that brings to mind the durable and dominant aces of old.”2

Table 2. Percentage of MLB Starts by Days’ Rest Since Last Start, 1960–2015

(Source: Sam Hovland, STATS LLC)

DON ZMINDA has worked for STATS LLC since 1990, first as Director of Publications and now as the company’s Director of Research for sports broadcasts. He has co-authored or edited many baseball books, including the annual “STATS Baseball Scoreboard” (1990–2001) and the SABR BioProject publication “Go-Go to Glory: The 1959 Chicago White Sox.” A Chicago native, Don is a graduate of Northwestern University (BS Journalism, 1970) and lives in Los Angeles with his wife Sharon.

Notes

1. To clarify our terms, “days’ rest” in this article refers to the number of days off between appearances. A pitcher who pitches a game on Sunday and another on Wednesday is working on two days’ rest; if his next appearance is on Friday, he would be pitching on four days’ rest.

2. Tyler Kepner, “Madison Bumgarner Rises to the Moment, and Jaws Drop,” The New York Times, October 30, 2014.

3. Another point of clarification: when the article refers to days’ rest between starts, any intervening relief appearances are not considered. So if a pitcher starts a game on Sunday, makes a relief appearance on Wednesday and then starts again on Friday, the study considers him to be working on four days’ rest between starts the same as a pitcher who made no intervening relief appearances.

4. Alexander’s major-league career began in 1911, but this article utilized the Retrosheet and STATS LLC MLB database, which includes player and team day-by-day data since 1914. All data for this article on MLB pitchers working on two days’ rest or fewer since their last start were provided by STATS LLC programmers Sam Hovland and Jacob Jaffe.

5. E-mail from Jim Kaat, May 4, 2015.

6. Jan Finkel, SABR BioProject biography of Johnny Sain.

7. Retrosheet.org data and daily logs.

8. Finkel.

9. Ibid.

10. Telephone interview with Jim Kaat, May 8. 2015.

11. Finkel.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Gregory H. Wolf, SABR BioProject biography of Wilbur Wood.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Rich Thompson, “Time Was Right for Wood,” Boston Herald, May 28, 1989.

19. George Langford, “Still More Work for Wilbur,” Chicago Tribune, August 31, 1971.

20. Pat Jordan, The Suitors of Spring (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1973), 209.

21. Langford, “Still More Work for Wilbur.”

22. Jerome Holtzman, “Iron-Man Wood Has Goal—Wants to Pitch a Twin Bill,” The Sporting News, August 7, 1971.

23. David Condon, “In the Wake of the News,” Chicago Tribune, March 12, 1972.

24. STATS LLC data, programming by Sam Hovland.

25. Ibid.

26. George Langford, “More Work? Really It Works!” Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1972.

27. E-mail from Jacob Jaffe of STATS LLC, May 7, 2015.

28. Historical data on pitchers’ starting doubleheaders courtesy of STATS LLC.

29. George Langford, “Wood posts 21st, 6–1,” Chicago Tribune, August 28, 1973.

30. George Langford, “Bahnsen is not unhappy over losing arbitration,” Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1974.

31. George Langford, “Gopher balls bugged Fergie,” Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1974.

32. Robert Markus, “Sox’ Wood not worried about mound problems,” Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1975.

33. Richard C. Lindberg, Total White Sox (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2006), 86.

34. John Snyder, White Sox Journal (New York: Clerisy Press, 2009), 438–39.

35. Wolf.

36. Elizabeth Karagianis, Boston Globe, April 27, 1985.

37. Finkel.

38. Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Abstract (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 866.

39. Jim Margalus, “Talking White Sox history with Tommy John,” SB Nation South Side Sox, June 24, 2011 (https://www.southsidesox.com/2011/6/24/2241067/talking-white-sox-history-with-tommy-john)

40. John Gabcik, SABR BioProject biography of Tom Bradley.

41. Robert Markus, “Wilbur drinks his beer and thinks,” Chicago Tribune, August 29, 1973.

A game at Minneapolis’ Nicollet Park in 1954, the most hitter-friendly park of its era. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Contrary to what you might read elsewhere, Forbes Field was not the first modern ballpark made of steel and concrete. That honor belongs to a minor-league stadium that now, like so many historic baseball sites, is a parking lot.1 Neil Park in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, was by no means the first—or only—significant minor-league ballpark to have thrived, only to meet an ignominious fate at the hands of those who didn’t fully appreciate what they had.

You might be familiar with the names of some of them: Nicollet Park, Rickwood Field, Seals Stadium, Wrigley Field, Gilmore Field, Engel Field, Offermann Stadium, Sulphur Dell. Whole books have been written about some of these places, and a few have even appeared in a movie or two that you might have seen, such as the Rockpile in Buffalo (The Natural), Bush Stadium in Indianapolis (Eight Men Out), and the old Durham Athletic Park (Bull Durham, of course).

Lots of stories and memories exist of these stadiums, but with a few notable exceptions, we don’t have a concrete idea of how these parks played. Sure, most people who know anything about minor- league baseball know that Nicollet Park and Sulphur Dell, with their short right-field fences, were great homer havens, but what about Seals Stadium in San Francisco? Was it a hitters park? A pitchers park? I believe it was a tough park for home runs and a bit of a hitters park otherwise, but we don’t really know because of a dearth of information on park effects for minor-league stadiums. Unless you’re willing to go through box scores and assemble them yourself, home-road splits for minor-league ballparks before 2005 don’t exist in the public eye.

A quick-and-dirty way to assess park effects is to take the total of team runs scored and allowed and divide that by the league average. It works better for assessing individual players than it does ballparks, but for the most part, this method shows which parks helped batters and which helped pitchers.

I developed another quick-and-dirty subjective assessment along those lines for ballparks, assigning or subtracting points on the following system:

Add 1 point if

• A team led its league in home runs.
• A team led its league in runs scored.
• A team led its league in runs allowed.
• A team led its league in home runs allowed.
• A team’s lineup included the league leader in home runs.

Add 2 points if

• A team led its league in run context, which is runs scored + runs allowed.

Add 1.5 points if

• A team led its league in home run context, or home runs + home runs allowed.

Subtract the same amount if

• A team finished last in its league in those respective categories.

Team homers, runs, and runs allowed are mostly available across the board after 1918. Because homers allowed weren’t tracked at all until the 1950s and not universally until the 1970s, I split minor-league parks into two groups, with the dividing line being 1963. The ballparks that were in use for more of their seasons before that year were put in Group A, the rest in Group B.

By this method, Table 1 shows the 10 most hitter-friendly ballparks in minor-league history.

Table 1: The Ten Most Hitter-Friendly Ballparks in the Minor Leagues

You can’t compare the point totals in Group A with those in Group B because more data are included in Group B, of course. That said, I’d bet that if a vote were taken among experts as to which minor-league ballpark was the best hitters park of all time, Nicollet Park would be at the top of the heap. Its legendary 279-foot right-field wall helped dozens if not hundreds of hitters. It seems hard to believe that when it opened, Nicollet was actually a canyon compared with the Millers’ previous park, Athletic Park, which helped Perry Werden hit an incredible 43 and 45 homers in 1894 and 1895. (Werden dropped to 18 the first year he played half his games in Nicollet.)

Sulphur Dell, shown here in the 1950s, was known as a hitter haven. (Tennessee State Government Archives)

One more note: Obviously, my ratings are based on totals. One could argue that a better way to evaluate ballparks is by points per season. I wouldn’t disagree, but completing the research necessary for such a thorough evaluation is beyond my bandwidth. That said, if one wanted to perform the research, I’d go double or nothing that with the possible exception of a ballpark that was used for just a single year, he or she would find that the two ballparks at the top of that list are Bonneville Park/Derks Field and Hughes Stadium.

Bonneville Park, later renamed Derks Field, was home to the Salt Lake City Bees from 1915 to 1946. It operated only 19 seasons during that time, but it racked up 61 points, or an average of 3.21 per season. That’s the highest of any ballpark that I evaluated that was open for at least 10 seasons (that didn’t include full home runs data). Almost all of that was accumulated when Bonneville Park was the hitters paradise of the Pacific Coast League from 1915 to 1925. Back then, the Bees led the PCL in run context every season—11 for 11. The Bees led every season in runs allowed (estimated) and in runs scored in eight out of 11. Of course, the reason for this was that Salt Lake City is about 4,000 feet farther above sea level than any of the other PCL cities at the time.

That said, the best hitters park of any minor-league stadium that lasted more than a year (that we can evaluate properly) has to be Hughes Stadium in Sacramento. Hughes Stadium is a track and football stadium at Sacramento City College, and in 1974 it was called into service as a baseball stadium for the Sacramento Solons, returning after a 14-year absence. Shoehorning a baseball diamond into the space resulted in a farce, with a left- field fence that was 235 feet from home plate.

The Solons used Hughes Stadium for three years before the team moved to San Jose (a culture shock to be sure for the hitters), and during those three years, the Solons led the PCL in every possible hitters category that my method uses except runs in 1976, when the Solons finished as runners-up by 24 (and a Solon player did not lead the league that year in homers). That’s 24 points out of a possible 26 in three seasons, or an 8.00 average.

As you might imagine, the home-run numbers are ridiculous. In 1974, the Solons hit a minor-league record 305 home runs. (The previous mark was 271 by the 1947 Las Vegas Stars.) They allowed what also has to be a minor-league record 301 home runs. That’s 606 home runs in 144 games that the Solons played. The league hit 1,107 homers for the whole season, so, yes, more than half were hit during Solons games alone!

That year, the Solons had a run context that was 22 percent better than the league average. That’s impressive, but it isn’t a record. The home-run context was—are you ready for this?—118 percent better than the league average. If that isn’t a record, it should be.

So Hughes Stadium is the greatest hitters park in minor-league history, unless it’s Bonneville Park, unless… as noted above, Nicollett Park went from being a decent hitters park relative to the league (based on incomplete data) to a launching pad after World War I. From 1919 to when Nicollet closed after 1955, the Millers racked up 125 points in 37 years, or an average of 3.38 per season. During that time, the Millers led the AA in homers 27 times, runs 21 times and run context 25 times. And that’s without any help from altitude.

On the flip side of the coin, parks that were pitcher- friendly tend to be less well-known. That isn’t surprising when you consider that most fans prefer offense, so they’re more likely to remember ballparks where runs were plentiful.

Here are the five best pitchers parks in minor- league history, according to my method:

1. NAT BAILEY STADIUM

• City: Vancouver, B.C., Canada
• Years in operation: 58, 1951-54, 1956-62, 1965-69, 1978-2019
• Points: minus-116.5
• Average team run context: 0.92
• Average team home-run context: 0.80

2. SAN JOSE MUNICIPAL STADIUM / EXCITE PARK

• City: San Jose, California
• Years in operation: 69, 1942, 1947-58, 1962-present
• Points: minus-111
• Average team run context: 0.93
• Average team home-run context: 0.83

3. PARQUE CENTENARIO 27 DE FEBRERO

• City: Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico
• Years in operation: 51, 1964-70, 1975, 1977-present
• Points: minus-109
• Average team run context: 0.88
• Average team home-run context: 0.72

4. BILLY HEBERT FIELD

• City: Stockton, California
• Years in operation: 47, 1953-72, 1978-2004
• Points: minus-99
• Average team run context: 0.91
• Average team home-run context: 0.83

5. DUNN FIELD

• City: Elmira, New York
• Years in operation: 65, 1939-55, 1957-2005
• Points: minus-93.5
• Average team run context: 0.97
• Average team home-run context: 0.86

Yes, that’s correct: Every one of the five best pitchers parks are old parks that survived. Three of the top five were in use in 2017, and all of the top five saw action as recently as 2004. I have no explanation for that other than perhaps older ballparks, when all other things are equal, play more as pitchers parks relative to new parks, perhaps because of shorter, closer fences in newer parks built to promote action.

One thing that you’ll note about pitchers parks is that you don’t see atmospheric anomalies, or ballparks from places where the ball didn’t travel well relative to the league, as you did with hitters parks, such as Bonneville Park in the PCL. In other words, you can’t find a situation where all of the parks are, say, above 3,000 feet in elevation except for one that’s 50 feet, so the negative totals generally aren’t as high as are the positive totals.

That said, I have no doubt that had Stockton and San Jose not been in the same league at mostly the same time, either one of those parks (and perhaps both) likely not only would be atop the list of pitchers paradises but might also have accumulated more points than any of the hitters havens.

For what it’s worth, I believe that the pitchers’ best friend with respect to preventing the home run relative to the league was Damaschke Field in Oneonta, New York. Used between 1939 and 2009, Damaschke just missed being included among the top five pitchers parks by a half-point. Of its -86 points accumulated in 43 seasons, 66 were the result of home run categories. Oneonta teams led their respective leagues (primarily the New York-Penn League) in fewest home runs eight times, fewest home runs allowed 23, and lowest home- run context 22 (the latter two in 34 seasons). The dimensions were nothing special, 335 feet to the corners and 401 to center, but the ball might as well have been made of pewter as far as how it traveled.

A final note: Some parks are hitters parks or pitchers parks only because of the league that they’re in at the time. In other words, they’re extraordinary compared with the rest of one league, but they might be absolutely ordinary when they’re in a different league, with different teams, parks, and locales.

Take the Dudley Dome, for example. It played as slightly pitcher-friendly until El Paso joined the Texas League. Instantly, the Dome became a launching pad. Conversely, Dunn Field was a desert when Elmira was in the Eastern League. As soon as it moved to the NYPL, it became primarily a hitters park, then reverted to a pitchers paradise after Elmira teams went independent.

As time goes on, it will be interesting to see what happens to Adelanto Stadium. Based on points per season, a case exists that it’s the greatest hitters park in minor-league history. It racked up 120 points in only 26 seasons in the California League. However, when the High Desert Mavericks closed shop in 2016 and the High Desert Yardbirds opened in the independent Pecos League in 2017, Adelanto Stadium played like a pitchers park in the pinball PecL.

It turns out that ballpark factors, like player performance, can be relative.

To complete the story, Neil Park closed in 1932 when the renamed Redbirds moved to Redbird Stadium. According to my analysis, Neil Park was dead neutral.

WILL CHRISTENSEN is a professional journalist, avid researcher, and minor-league baseball nut. He has been a member of SABR since 1986 and finally is paying back all the benefits he’s received over the years by copyediting bios for the SABR BioProject.

Notes

1. Philip Lowry, et. al., Green Cathedrals (Fifth Edition). Page 104 of the recent SABR edition states that “in 1905, [Neil Park II] was the only steel-and-concrete stadium used for a major league game until Forbes Field opened in 1909.”

APPENDIX

Presented here are the fully compiled numbers for some of the ballparks discussed in the article. Two tables are included for each park, one for runs, and one for home runs. The home run table for each park contains only the seasons for which home run totals were published.

For each season, the following stats are included:

G: Team games (entire season, not just at the park)

R: Team runs

RA: Team runs allowed

LgR: League average runs per team

LGm: League average games played per team

HR: Team home runs

HRA: Team home runs allowed

T Cxt: Team context. This is the runs context for the team for the season, or the percentage of runs scored in games played by played by the team compared with the league average, calculated as:

(team runs + team runs allowed divided by 2 * league average) * (team games / league average games).

For example, in 1953, the Stockton Ports scored 679 runs and allowed 593 in 141 games. The average California League that season scored and allowed 747 runs (rounded) in 140.75 games, so the context formula is:

((679 + 593) / (2 * 747)) * (141 / 140.75) = (1,272 / 1,494) * (141 / 140.75) = 0.85

In 1953, Ports games had an average of 15 percent fewer runs than the league average.

(Click image to enlarge)