by Bruce Nash
It was one of the last things Herb Washington experienced in the Majors. He was released early the next season.
BILLY ROGELL
Shortstop · Detroit, AL · April 30, 1934
To his everlasting chagrin, Detroit Tigers shortstop Billy Rogell learned a valuable lesson: Never tick off an infielder because, when you least expect it, he will get his revenge. In Rogell’s case, it was a mortifying pickoff.
During the offseason, Rogell supplemented his modest Detroit Tigers salary by delivering milk in his hometown of Chicago for $41 a week. One of his customers was St. Louis Browns second baseman Ski “Spinach” Melillo.
Because they were friendly rivals on the diamond, Rogell decided to have some fun at Melillo’s expense during the winter before the 1934 season. Rogell made sure that he delivered the milk to Melillo as early as possible, before 6:00 a.m. Rogell would put the milk on Melillo’s back porch, rattle the bottles, and shout up to the bedroom window, “Here’s your milk, Ski!”
This never failed to wake up—and irritate—Melillo. Being a patient man, Melillo waited for his revenge. It came the first time that the two teams met in the new season. With the hometown Tigers trailing 4–1 midway through the game, Rogell slid into second with a double. Feeling pleased about the hit, Rogell brushed the dirt off his uniform. Then, taking a few steps off the base, he turned his attention toward St. Louis hurler Ivy Andrews.
Melillo, who was playing second base, sauntered close to the bag and said to Rogell, “Billy, remember how you’d wake me up in the morning, shouting, ‘Here’s your milk’?”
Rogell grinned and nodded. “Boy, do I. That sure made my day.”
“Well, this is going to make my day,” retorted Melillo, who then tagged out Rogell with the old hidden ball trick. “Now you’ve got some explaining to do to [Tigers manager Mickey] Cochrane. Who knows, you might wind up delivering milk again sooner than you think.”
The following winter, Rogell was somewhat quieter in his deliveries to the Melillo household. But he was determined to get the last laugh.
“Back then, the infielders used to leave their gloves on the field when they went to bat,” Rogell recalled. “It just so happened I found a dead sparrow in the dugout, and I knew Ski was afraid of anything dead. So I secretly put the dead sparrow in his glove. When he took his position in the field the next inning and saw that dead sparrow in his glove, he threw his glove in the air and took off running.”
RON LEFLORE
Left Fielder · Montreal, NL · July 28, 1980
Montreal Expos left fielder Ron LeFlore knew that stealing a base requires concentration. But he learned the hard way that staying on base also requires concentration.
In the bottom of the seventh inning of a 5–4 victory over the visiting Cincinnati Reds, LeFlore, the Expos’ best baserunner, singled and easily swiped second for his 67th theft of the year. As he stood up and brushed himself off, he noticed that the electronic scoreboard at Olympic Stadium had flashed an interesting message: It was 115 years ago to the day that the first stolen base had been recorded by
Ed Cuthbert.
For a player who would finish the season with a league-leading 97 stolen bases, LeFlore found this little piece of historical trivia fascinating. Maybe too much so. While he was standing there reading about baseball, he forgot about playing baseball—and was promptly picked off second by reliever Dick Tomlin.
SUPER-SILLY SUPERSTITIONS
For the Nuttiest Habits and Idiosyncrasies of All Time, The Baseball Hall of Shame™ Inducts:
LOU “THE MAD RUSSIAN” NOVIKOFF
Outfielder · Chicago, NL · 1941–1944
Chicago Cubs outfielder Lou Novikoff had the weirdest superstition of any batter in baseball—he insisted that his wife Esther taunt him from the stands.
He claimed that her shouts of derision inspired him.
The superstition began when Novikoff played for the Los Angeles Angels in the Pacific Coast League in 1940. Esther discovered that he seemed to do better the angrier he got, so she decided to test her theory. As he came to bat, she shouted from her box seat behind home plate, “You big bum! You can’t hit!”
The words turned Novikoff’s ears red. He swung on the first pitch and sent the ball sailing over the left field wall for a home run. Later, when fans asked Esther why she kept shouting nasty things to her husband, she explained, “I yell at him like that to make him mad. And when he gets mad, he gets hits.”
After that game, Novikoff insisted that his wife continue to berate him every time he batted. On road trips or when she couldn’t make a home game, he tried to picture what slander she’d hurl at him to fire him up. It worked. He batted .363 and clubbed 41 homers that season.
The following year, Novikoff was called up to the Cubs and left his family behind in Los Angeles. But without his wife insulting him from the stands, Novikoff batted only .241 in his first season. The promising rookie didn’t look so promising.
The next year, the Cubs played the cross-town rival White Sox in a preseason exhibition game. When Novikoff came to bat, Sox manager Jimmy Dykes yelled to him from the dugout, “Mad Russian, eh? If I couldn’t hit any better than you, I’d be mad too.” Novikoff was so ticked off that he laced a base hit.
Realizing how much he missed his wife—and her insults—the peculiar outfielder summoned her to the Windy City. A few days later, when he stepped to the plate at Wrigley Field for the Cubs’ home opener, a piercing female voice rose above the crowd, yelling, “Strike the big bum out! He can’t hit!” It was his loving wife Esther. Novikoff then smacked a run-scoring base hit. With her in the stands at most home games, he went on to bat an even .300 in his first full year in the Majors.
When Esther’s taunting didn’t work, Novikoff turned to another superstition—singing. Blessed with a fine baritone voice, he believed that singing could change his, and the team’s, luck. Unfortunately for those around him, he sometimes sang at the oddest times—like in the middle of the night on the train.
One night in 1943 in Philadelphia, Cubs manager Charlie Grimm turned on the radio and listened to a show that was broadcasting live from a Philly nightclub. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said the master of ceremonies, “we will now hear several songs from one of our guests here tonight, Lou Novikoff, the great Cubs outfielder.”
Grimm leaped into his clothes and into a taxi. He arrived at the nightclub in time to catch Novikoff’s closing number, “My Wild Irish Rose.” Grimm applauded politely and then informed Novikoff that he had just been fined for violating curfew. But the Mad Russian protested, saying, “I only sang tonight because I thought it would bring our team good luck.”
He had a point. The Cubs won three out of four from the Phillies.
BABE RUTH
Pitcher, Outfielder, First Baseman · Boston, New York, AL; Boston, NL · 1914–1935
Babe Ruth was so superstitious that he used to wear women’s silk hose because he believed they protected him from jinxes.
The Sultan of Swat heard that Hall of Famer Honus Wagner wore ladies silken stockings when not playing. For some crazy reason, Wagner felt that women’s hose—not men’s—guarded him from batting slumps.
It certainly seemed to work for Wagner. In his 21 years in the bigs (1897–1917), the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop batted over .300 in each of 16 seasons and finished with a lifetime average of .328.
Toward the end of Wagner’s career, the Babe, who was then a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, learned about Wagner’s strange superstition. Ruth wasn’t about to argue with success, so when not in uniform, he chose to sport knee-length ladies’ silken hose.
Whether it’s coincidence or not, Ruth hit over .300 in 17 of his 22 years in the Majors and ended up with a lifetime batting average of .342.
Ruth had plenty of other quirks. When jogging in from the outfield,
he always would step on second base. And on the rare occasions when he forgot to touch the bag, he would trot back out of the dugout and kick the base.
Although Ruth was a generous man, he would never loan one of his bats to a teammate. Ruth once explained, “Bats have so many hits in them, and each time I lend one to a guy and he whacks a couple of hits, all I’m doing is lopping a few points off Babe Ruth’s batting average. That’s why nobody uses Babe Ruth’s bat but Babe Ruth.”
The Babe dressing like a babeNational Baseball Hall of Fame Library
TURK WENDELL
Pitcher · Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Colorado, NL 1993–2004
Turk Wendell was one of the most eccentric and superstitious relievers in baseball.
He posted some solid seasons in the Majors, including 18 saves for the Chicago Cubs in 1996. But he’s most remembered for his wacky superstitions.
Whenever he headed to the mound to pitch, he stuffed exactly four pieces of black licorice in his mouth. At the end of each inning, he would spit them out, return to the dugout, whip out his toothbrush, and brush his teeth. While brushing, he often hid in the dugout, either by ducking behind objects or by facing the wall.
Getting ready to pitch for the first time in any game, he would draw three crosses in the dirt on the mound. If his catcher was standing, Wendell would squat and if the catcher was squatting then the hurler would stand. Before facing the first batter in each inning, Wendell would turn his back to home plate and wave to the center fielder. The reliever wouldn’t pitch until the center fielder waved back.
On his way to and from the mound each inning that he pitched, he leaped—not stepped—over the baseline, a superstition known as Wendell’s 3-foot kangaroo hop.
Because he was an avid hunter, Wendell believed that parts of animals were lucky charms. When he pitched, he wore a necklace adorned with trophies from animals he had harvested, including mountain lion claws and the teeth of wild pigs and buffalo.
Wendell had a thing about the number 9, which he was convinced was lucky. He wore uniform number 99 in honor of Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn, one of the main characters in the movie Major League, portrayed by Charlie Sheen. In 2000, Wendell signed a contract with the New York Mets that would have been worth $10 million, but he insisted that the agreement be for $9,999,999.99.
CHARLES “VICTORY” FAUST
Human Good Luck Charm · New York, NL · 1911
The 1911 New York Giants were the most superstitious team in baseball history—and relied on a human good luck charm to carry them to the National League pennant.
The team believed that a player who found a stray hairpin would get a double, but looking at a cross-eyed girl would lead to a hitless day at the plate, and leaving more than a 25-cent tip was bad luck. The players rubbed their bats with ham bones in the belief that it would attract hits. They wore lucky medallions, lucky ties, lucky shoes, and lucky hankies.
Early in the season second baseman Laughing Larry Doyle fell into a batting slump. On his way to the ballpark one day, he spotted a wagonload of beer barrels. That day he got three hits. But the next day he didn’t hit the ball out of the infield. “Maybe those barrels brought you luck,” said Giants manager John McGraw—and a new baseball superstition was born. From then on, players believed it was good fortune to see a load of beer barrels before a game.
A few weeks later, the Giants were playing poorly, having lost five of seven. Trying to snap them out of the slump, McGraw paid a beer-cart driver $2 to travel past his players as they entered the clubhouse. Seeing those beer barrels, the players were jubilant and went on a tear, winning 10 of their next 12 games.
But the one belief that mattered most to the players was their faith in their lucky mascot—Charles “Victory” Faust. He was a tall, lanky 30-year-old Kansas farmer who got a tryout with the Giants in St. Louis in July after a fortune teller told him he would become a great pitcher. He failed miserably in his audition, but McGraw and the players liked him, and let him sit on the bench for the games against the Cardinals. The Giants won three straight.
When they headed for Pittsburgh, the Giants assumed they had seen the last of Faust. But by hopping freight trains, he caught up with them in Philadelphia. During that time, New York had lost five of seven. After letting Faust sit on the bench again, the Giants won six straight. There was no doubt that Faust had to remain on the team. McGraw, who was just as superstitious as his players, announced, “We’re taking Charlie along to help us win the pennant.”
Faust, the Giants’ good luck charm
Although Faust was never formally given a contract, the club issued him a uniform and paid his expenses. The players were convinced he had special powers. One day, he told catcher Chief Meyers that the backstop would get a single and double that afternoon. Meyers did. The next day, Faust predicted that Meyers would get three hits. And, incredibly, Meyers did.
If Faust wasn’t sitting in the dugout, he was in the bullpen spreading his brand of good fortune. From the time Faust sat on the Giants bench in St. Louis to the day the team clinched the pennant, the Giants had a record of 39-9.
Faust was getting so much attention from the press and fans that he signed a $200 a week vaudeville contract. But in his first week away from the club, New York won only one of its next four games, so Faust broke his showbiz contract and returned to the team. The Giants won their next 10 games and went on to capture the pennant—their first in six years—by seven and a half games.
Out of gratitude, McGraw let Faust pitch briefly after clinching the pennant. In each of two appearances, he pitched the ninth inning, giving up a total of two hits and two runs.
But Faust’s luck ran out in the postseason. Despite his prediction of a world championship for New York, the Giants lost the Series to the Philadelphia Athletics. The faith the team had in Charles “Victory” Faust was shaken . . . and he never donned a Giants uniform again.
GEORGE STALLINGS
Manager · Boston, NL · 1914
George Stallings feared jinxes more than any other manager in baseball.
He truly believed that part of his job as skipper of the Boston Braves was to spot jinxes and ward them off. So he went to extraordinarily wacky lengths to defuse their bad influence, especially in 1914.
Off the field, Stallings was a dignified, soft-spoken Southern gentleman, courtly of manner and meticulous in dress. But when he stepped onto the baseball diamond, he turned into a superstitious “jinx-dodger.” To Stallings, even the most innocent of objects could cause his team harm.
The eccentric manager had an uncontrollable phobia over, of all things, pieces of paper. He hated them. He regarded any loose paper in front of the dugout as an omen of bad luck. The site of a piece of paper on the floor of the Braves dugout sent him into a frenzy.
Gabe Paul, who became one of baseball’s most respected general managers, used to cater to this idiosyncrasy when he was Stallings’s bat boy. Paul painstakingly kept the dugout area clean of any pieces of paper. “If one little scrap of paper escaped me,” Paul recalled, “Mr. Stallings’s roar scared the life out of me.”
To thwart any ill fortune and to encourage a rally, Stallings stayed literally frozen in place whenever a Brave got a hit. Once, Stallings was bending over to pick up a peanut shell—another sign of bad luck—when a Brave socked a single. Stallings refused to move from his stooped position until the last Brave was out, which was a half hour later because the team went wild and scored seven runs in the inning. When the rally finally ended, Stallings couldn’t straighten up. Two players had to carry him back to the clubhouse where the trainer applied hot towels to unbend him.
Stallings was constantly finding signs of bad luck and then creating ways to nullify their power. If the team’s bats were crossed, he uncrossed them so his players wouldn’t get hurt or go hitless that day. Sometimes he shoo
k the bats to “wake up the lumber.” He made sure his players left their gloves sitting right side up for fear they were risking an error. In close games, he slid up and down the length of the bench, hoping to pick up good luck and rub out the bad luck. Naturally, his players had to jump off the bench and make way for him when he went into his sliding mode.
Stallings seldom saw outfielder Josh Devore catch a ball. Devore, who was traded to Boston late in the year, had cement hands. One day, late in a tie game, a high fly was hit to him in right field. Devore circled under the ball with uncertainty. The tension over whether or not he would catch it was too much for Stallings to bear. The manager rushed to the clubhouse door with his back to the diamond. After several seconds ticked off, he asked, “Did he catch it?” Devore did. After that, whenever there was a high fly hit to Devore, Stallings turned his back on him.
The manager’s obsession with jinxes had a bizarrely positive effect on the team. The Braves, who had only one .300 hitter and an error-prone outfield, were wallowing in the National League cellar 11 games out in mid-July. But Stallings had finally convinced most of his players that they couldn’t lose because he was using counteracting whammies on all jinxes. Amazingly, the Braves started winning and, in one of the most stunning turn-arounds in baseball history, captured the pennant and the World Series.
AL SIMMONS
Outfielder · Philadelphia, AL · 1932
When it came to superstitions, the naked truth was that Hall of Famer Al Simmons believed in them.
After leading the American League in hitting with an eye-popping
.390 batting average in 1931, the Philadelphia Athletics outfielder slipped into a terrible batting slump the following year. He tried everything to snap out of it, but nothing worked.