by Bruce Nash
In the top of the eighth, however, Peckinpaugh smashed a home run to give the Senators a 7–6 lead. It looked like he had redeemed himself. But that was short-lived.
With two out in the bottom of the eighth, Pittsburgh tied the game with back-to-back doubles. Then, after Moore walked, Max Carey rapped an easy grounder to Peckinpaugh for what should have been the third out. The shortstop scooped it up, but he botched the force-out on Moore at second by making a bad throw. Peckinpaugh’s record-setting eighth error filled the bases and set the stage for Cuyler, who promptly doubled home the two winning runs as the Pirates captured the Series with a 9–7 victory.
Needless to say there was no fancy dinner in Washington to celebrate Peckinpaugh’s MVP award.
JOHNNY MILJUS
Pitcher · Pittsburgh, NL · October 8, 1927
Johnny “The Big Serb” Miljus caused the wildest ending ever to a World Series.
Going up against the New York Yankees’ “Murderers’ Row” powered by Babe Ruth (60 homers) and Lou Gehrig (175 RBIs), the Pittsburgh Pirates were decidedly the underdogs in the 1927 postseason classic.
The Yankees took the first three games and were leading 3–1 in Game 4 on a two-run blast by Ruth, but the Pirates fought back to tie it in the top of the seventh inning, compliments of two New York errors.
Pittsburgh then brought in Miljus to face the Yankees in the bottom of the seventh. Miljus, a Pittsburgh native, had posted an 8-3 record and a stellar 1.90 ERA during the regular season. In Game 1, he had handcuffed New York, twirling four scoreless innings in relief.
He continued his mastery over the Yankees by holding them scoreless through the eighth inning. The Pirates couldn’t push across a run either, so going into the bottom of the ninth, the game remained deadlocked 3–3.
Miljus then committed the cardinal sin of pitchers—walking the leadoff batter, in this case Earle Combs. Mark Koenig then beat out a bunt down the third base line, putting runners on first and second with Ruth coming to the plate. In the Babe’s previous at-bat, Miljus had coaxed him to hit into a double play.
Knowing the Series-winning run was in scoring position, Miljus hurled a pitch he hoped would lead to another twin killing. But the ball bounded by catcher Johnny Gooch for a wild pitch, which moved the runners to second and third. Now the winning run was only 90 feet away.
Pirates manager Donie Bush then ordered an intentional walk to Ruth. As Miljus tossed the first of four wide pitches for the walk, the Bambino shouted to the pitcher, “Give me a chance!” No such luck. Babe got three more balls for the free pass. In frustration, Ruth pointed to on-deck hitter Lou Gehrig and yelled, “The Buster will do it if I don’t.”
With the bases loaded and nobody out, the Pittsburgh infielders and outfielders moved in. Miljus bore down and struck out Gehrig and then Bob Meusel, who had batted .325 during the season. To the dismay of Yankees fans who were yelling at Miljus in an attempt to rattle him, it looked as though the hurler might actually wriggle out of this incredibly tight jam.
After the fielders returned to normal playing depth, Tony Lazzeri, a .302 regular season hitter, stepped to the plate. He hit a long foul ball for strike one. Gooch then called for a curve and dropped down on one knee to give Miljus a low target. The hurler nodded, figuring this would be the pitch that would end the inning. And so it did, but not in the way he hoped.
Miljus let fly with a curve that didn’t break. To his horror, it sailed high and wide. Gooch leaped up and lunged for the ball, but it glanced off his glove and rolled about 12 feet away—far enough for Combs to scamper across the plate with the Series-winning run.
Recalled Pirates star outfielder Lloyd Waner, “For a couple seconds I didn’t budge. I just stood there in center field. I couldn’t believe it, really. It’s no way to end a ballgame much less a World Series on a doggone wild pitch.”
It was the only time a Series ended in such a shameful way.
ALL FOULED UP
For the Foulest Foul Balls of All Time,
The Baseball Hall of Shame™ Inducts:
RICHIE ASHBURN
Center Fielder · Philadelphia, NL · August 17, 1957
It wasn’t enough that Richie Ashburn hit a foul into the stands that smacked a grandmother in the face. No, as the injured fan was being carried out on a stretcher, Ashburn whacked another foul that struck poor Granny again!
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Ashburn recalled. “When I saw what happened, I felt terrible.”
Not as terrible as Alice Roth, who had taken her two grandsons to see the New York Giants play the home Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium. Mrs. Roth, the wife of Earl Roth, sports editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, and her grandsons were sitting behind third base when Ashburn, the Phillies center fielder, came to the plate. “Richie was fouling off a lot of balls,” recalled Mrs. Roth’s grandson Preston, who was 8 years old at the time. “My grandmother was fixing my cap and never saw the ball coming. It hit her square in the face.”
The blow broke Mrs. Roth’s nose and left her dazed and bleeding. Medical personnel immediately rushed to her aid and placed her on a stretcher. Preston suffered a blow of sorts too. Although he and his brother Tom were upset, Preston had the presence of mind to notice that a man sitting in front of them had ended up with the ball. Preston recalled, “I asked him if I could have the ball. He just looked at me and said, ‘Go to hell, kid.’”
Mrs. Roth’s ordeal wasn’t over yet. Play on the field had halted momentarily while the teams focused their attention on the injured woman. When Mrs. Roth was placed on a stretcher, the game resumed, and Ashburn stepped back into the batter’s box. Too bad the medical personnel didn’t take her out just a little bit quicker. While Mrs. Roth was being carried off on the stretcher, Ashburn swatted another wicked foul. Unbelievably, the same helpless woman was struck again.
Ashburn felt so bad about the incident that he visited Mrs. Roth regularly in the hospital and brought her bouquets. The team gave her grandsons free tickets and a tour of the clubhouse, where they met players and received an autographed baseball. Apparently, the boys forgot the painful reason for the red carpet treatment. Recalled their mother, Mrs. Dorothy Roth, “For my two sons, this was quite exciting. When poor Grandma was still suffering in the hospital, the boys went to visit her. One of them asked, ‘Grandma, do you think you could go to an Eagles game and get hit in the face with a football?’”
GEORGE BURNS
First Baseman · Detroit, AL · 1915
Detroit Tigers first baseman George Burns hit the most scorching foul ball ever to land in the grandstands. It reportedly started a fire in a fan’s coat pocket.
The crazy incident occurred during a scoreless game with the visiting Boston Red Sox at Briggs Stadium. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Burns—no relation to the comedian with the same name—came to bat and worked the count full. On the next pitch, he fouled the ball into the crowd. There was the usual flurry in the stands as some fans scattered to avoid the ball while others lunged for it.
Burns walked on the next pitch. But before he reached first base, the commotion in the stands where his foul ball had landed flared up even more—especially when a fan yelled, “There’s a man on fire here!”
Players and fans saw a middle-aged man hopping up and down, with smoke coming out of the pocket of his sportcoat. A quick-thinking soft drink vendor raced to the rescue. He ran up to the smoking fan, opened a bottle of soda pop, poured it into the man’s pocket, and squelched the fire.
Incredible as it sounds, the foul ball had hit the fan’s coat and touched off a box of matches inside. After the fan took off his singed sportcoat, he muttered to those around him, “It figures this would happen on a ball hit by a player named Burns.”
BOB FELLER
Pitcher · Cleveland, AL · May 14, 1939
Cleveland
Indians star pitcher Bob Feller threw a pitch that was fouled off into the worst possible place imaginable—the face of his mother, Lena.
On Mother’s Day 1939, Feller’s family had journeyed from their home in Van Meter, Iowa, to Chicago to watch Rapid Robert pitch against the White Sox at Comiskey Park. Feller had arranged for his folks to sit in box seats on the first base side close to the field so he could see them from the mound.
He set the White Sox down in the first two innings and was cruising along with a comfy 6–0 lead when near disaster struck. With two on and two out, batter Marv Owen lashed a nasty foul ball into the stands. Out of 28,000 people, the ball hit Mrs. Feller in the face just above her right eye. The impact broke the poor lady’s glasses and opened up a deep cut.
Feller rushed to the stands to check on his mother, who was hurt and bleeding but still conscious. “I felt sick,” Feller later recalled. “I saw the police and ushers leading her out of the stands so they could take her to the hospital. There wasn’t anything I could do, so I went on pitching.”
Feller and mom, Lena, before her Mother’s Day surpriseNational Baseball
Hall of Fame Library
But he was so shaken up that he lost his control, walked several batters, and gave up three runs in the inning. However, he settled down and finished the game, winning it 9–4. Then he rushed to the hospital, where his mom had received six stitches and was kept under observation for two days.
“Mother looked up from the hospital bed, her face bruised and both eyes blackened, and she was still able to smile reassuringly,” Feller recalled. “She told me, ‘My head aches, Robert, but I’m all right. Now don’t go blaming yourself. It wasn’t your fault.’
“It was a one-in-a-million shot that my mother, while sitting in a crowd, would be struck by a foul ball resulting from a pitch I had made.”
And on Mother’s Day, no less.
DENARD SPAN
Outfielder · Minnesota, AL · March 31, 2010
As unfathomable as it seems for a mom to get nailed by a foul ball off a pitch thrown by her son, it’s even more unbelievable that a mother would get struck by a foul ball hit by her son. Yet Minnesota Twins outfielder Denard Span did just that.
He swatted the odds-defying foul ball during a spring training game with the home team New York Yankees at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. Span, a Tampa native, had left 20 tickets for relatives and friends in prime seats three rows from the field directly to the left of the Twins’ third base dugout. He was thrilled to be playing in front of his family, especially his mother, Wanda Wilson, who was proudly wearing a Twins jersey with Span’s name on the back. The game was his last homecoming before the start of the 2010 season.
His family and friends were just settling into their seats when Span led off the game. With the count 3-and-2, he fouled off the pitch. The low liner zipped past the Twins’ dugout and slammed right into the chest of his mother below her shoulder.
“When it first happened, I kind of froze a little bit,” Span told reporters. “I couldn’t believe it actually hit her. When I realized what happened, that’s when I took off running.”
Span dropped his bat and sprinted into the grandstand to console his mother while paramedics stationed at the ballpark went to her aid. “It just seemed like everything was in slow motion when I hit the ball,” Span recalled. “I didn’t see her before I got up to the plate. But as soon as the ball was in the air, I realized it was going after my mom. When I saw her go down, I couldn’t do anything but just run after her and make sure she was okay.”
Fortunately, she was not seriously hurt, although she was sore. Paramedics suggested Wilson get checked out at the hospital, but she declined to go. After all, she had come to see her son play. Although Wilson remained in the stadium, she moved to a different seat farther away from the field and under the grandstand roof.
The game had been held up for a few minutes while Span stayed with his mother. When play resumed, he was still so rattled that he took a called third strike. Assured that his mom was okay, he played in the outfield for the next two innings.
Before the bottom of the third, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter pulled Span aside and suggested that Span should be with his mother. “He was just like, ‘You go see about your mom,’” Span recalled. “I was already feeling that way, but to have him say it to me, I was like, ‘You know what? He’s right.’ Mentally, my mind wasn’t into the game. It was on her well-being.”
Span said that his mother scolded him when he took himself out of the game. “She got mad at me because everyone came to see me play,” he recalled. “She was madder at me for coming out of the game than for me hitting her.”
BO WYBLE
Fan · Houston, NL · August 9, 2010
Houston Astros fan Bo Wyble proved that chivalry is dead, at least at the ballpark, after Houston’s Chris Johnson hit a foul into the stands.
Wyble had taken his 19-year-old girlfriend of five months, Sara Saco-Vertiz, to a game against the visiting Atlanta Braves at Minute Maid Park. Early in the contest, the couple moved down to better seats that hugged the left field foul line. Minutes later, in the bottom of the fourth inning, Johnson stroked a foul line drive that headed straight for them.
Wyble stood up as if he was ready to catch the ball for his girlfriend, or at the very least, protect her from getting hit. But, as the video that went viral painfully shows, at the last second, he dodged out of the way, leaving Sara directly in the path of the ball, which smacked her right on the elbow.
And where was Wyble? He was bent over snatching the ball. Only after he had secured the ball did he check on his girlfriend’s condition. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt, other than having a sore elbow.
An inning later, during the game telecast, FOX Sports Houston reporter Patti Smith interviewed the couple live. Sara told her, “As soon as we got here and saw where we were sitting I said, ‘Baby, I’m going to get hit.’ And he said, ‘No, no you’re not. I’ll catch it if you do’ . . . And sure enough the ball comes at me and I shout, ‘Baby!’ and he just bails.” Sara then held up her arm to show the seam marks from the impact of the baseball on her elbow.
When Smith asked Wyble what happened, he explained, “The ball was coming. I was going to catch it. But then it was in the lights and I lost track of it.”
Smith pulled out some sunglasses, handed them to him, and scolded him.
“If you lose it [the ball] next time, you should go towards your girlfriend, protect her. Don’t go the other way like a little chicken.”
Wyble nodded meekly.
Then Smith turned to Sara and asked, “You think this maybe is a foreshadowing for the future that he might not be by your side?”
Sara hesitated and said, “Maybe I do need to reconsider . . .”
Three days later, after video of the foul play was seen repeatedly on ESPN’s SportsCenter and got tens of thousands of hits on YouTube, the Foul Ball Couple appeared on CBS’s The Early Show.
“I just lost sight of it, so I moved, and I figured she wasn’t sitting still,” said Wyble, who in the blogoshere was called Bo the Bailer. “I figured she’d move.”
Sara said she wasn’t too upset by Wyble jumping out of the way, adding that the pain in her elbow was “a six” on a scale to 10. “Honestly, it wasn’t that bad,” she said. “I have a high pain tolerance.”
Sara added that she was surprised by all the attention. “The fact that so many people watched it, I didn’t think that was going to happen.”
At the end of the interview, the couple awkwardly announced they were no longer a couple. Wyble got the ball, but he lost the girl.
HEAVE HO-HOS
For the Most Inglorious Ejections of All Time,
The Baseball Hall of Shame™ Inducts:
BOB “FATS” FOTHERGILL
Pinch Hi
tter · Detroit, AL · May 24, 1926
Bob “Fats” Fothergill got ejected for losing his temper with the home plate umpire, but at least he left a lasting impression—literally.
The roly-poly Detroit Tigers outfielder had two passions in life: playing baseball and eating. His official weight was listed at 230 pounds, but the 5-foot-10 player often tipped the scales at well over 250 pounds. Columnist Joe Williams wrote that Fothergill’s “barrier to greatness is a Graf Zeppelin belt line.” Teammate Charlie Gehringer once said Fothergill “was about as round as he was tall.”
One day, Fothergill was seen carrying a big bundle under his arm in the clubhouse and was asked if that was his laundry. Fothergill replied, “Laundry, nothing. It’s my lunch.”
Most every year, Fothergill reported to spring training well over his playing weight. It was too bad because the leaner he was, the better he hit—and he ended up with a lifetime batting average of .325.
In 1926, Fothergill was so overweight at the start of the season that he went on a crash weight-reduction program. He exercised for hours in a rubber suit, took Turkish baths, and followed a strict diet. It was too much for him. He grew increasingly testy until he cracked during a pinch-hitting appearance in a game against the Cleveland Indians.
Called out on strikes by home plate umpire Bill Dinneen, Fothergill became uncharacteristically enraged. He seized Dinneen and bit him on the arm. For his shocking display of cannibalism, Fothergill was tossed out of the game.
“It’s okay by me,” Fothergill muttered to the ump. “That’s the first bite of meat I’ve had in a month.”
EDD ROUSH