Strange & Amazing Baseball Stories

by Gutman; Bill

  His name was William Ellsworth "Dummy" Hoy, and he played in the National League from 1888 to 1902. "Dummy" was an outfielder who compiled a respectable .291 average during his career. But Dummy Hoy had a handicap. He was a deaf mute and, as such, couldn't hear the umpire's calls. Finally, Hoy had the idea of asking the umpire to raise his right arm to indicate a strike. The umps agreed, and from that request came the standard hand signs that are still used today.

  Dummy Hoy, incidentally, saw many umpires using the signs he requested. Born in 1862, at the height of the Civil War, he died on December 15, 1961, at the ripe old age of ninety-nine.

  Some ideas, like Dummy Hoy's, quickly become a permanent part of the game. Others just come and quickly go. On August 2, 1938, the Brooklyn Dodgers were hosting a doubleheader against the St. Louis Cardinals at Ebbets Field. Imagine the surprise of the Cardinal team when the host Dodgers brought yellow baseballs out onto the field. Someone had the bright idea that a yellow ball would be easier to follow than the conventional white one.

  So the game was played with the yellow baseball.

  The Dodgers won it, 6-2, but at the start of the second game, the regular white ball was back. The yellow ball never gained support among any of the other clubs in the majors and never appeared again. It was a one-shot idea that didn't work.

  Many of baseball's strangest ideas have been designed to lure more fans through the turnstiles. And it doesn't just happen in the majors. The minor leagues are also fertile ground for wacky ideas.

  Take, for example, the time this guy walked up to the owner of a minor league team in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and volunteered to be buried alive in a box behind home plate while the game was being played! Hard to believe, right? Well, the incident was witnessed by Stan Wasiak, the longtime manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers' minor league team at Vero Beach, Florida.

  It was a bizarre promotional gimmick, all right, but Wasiak remembers it as if it happened yesterday.

  "The guy was a Hindu, from India, I think," Wasiak recalls, "and he used to do this to make money. Before the game they dug a hole behind home plate, put the box down, and he got into it. Then they covered the hole with dirt and said, 'Play ball !'"

  So both clubs went out there and played nine innings. It's a wonder that the players could concentrate at all, because each time they ran on and off the field, they knew there was a man buried alive just behind the home plate umpire. He didn't even have any air tubes in the box.

  "When the game ended, no one left the ballpark," Stan Wasiak remembers. "They were all waiting to see the guy dug up. Sure enough, he got out of the box still alive, but he was a little groggy. He told us later that he had enough air for about two-and-a-half to three hours. I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if the game went into extra innings.

  "The guy also told us about being buried one time when water began seeping into the box. He admitted getting scared when that happened. I'll tell you, I wouldn't do something like that for a billion dollars."

  Believe it or not, it happened. The guy probably didn't know much about baseball, either. After all, he never got to watch the game.

  The man in the box happened back in the 1940s, but publicity stunts and crazy promos have continued at the minor league level. Stan Wasiak remembers back around 1978 when two minor league outfielders, Mary Garrison and Rickey Henderson, raced a horse for 100 yards. And if the name of Rickey Henderson sounds familiar, he's the same guy who later broke the major league record with 130 stolen bases in a season and as of 1986 was starring for the New York Yankees.

  "But he couldn't beat the horse," Wasiak says, with a wink. "The horse won, hands down."

  Stan Wasiak has yet another strange baseball memory. He recalls in the early 1980s getting a call at Vero Beach from a guy whose stunt was to blow himself up with dynamite around second base. Once he described his act, Vero Beach officials weighed the value of the publicity stunt and finally gave him the go-ahead.

  "His name was Boom Boom Costa, something like that," Wasiak remembers, "and sure enough, he did his act five straight days at Vero Beach. Before the game he got in a box and it really blew up. All he had for protection was a football helmet. Crazy !"

  But the craziness isn't reserved for the minor leagues. Major league owners have always looked for ideas that would either help their teams, possibly change the game, or simply bring more customers into the ballpark.

  For example, the function of a major league scoreboard was once simply to give the out-of-town scores. The old, traditional scoreboards were hand operated, with the scores posted by an operator working behind the board. By the 1950s, some scoreboards began to work electronically. Then, in 1960, Bill Veeck, owner of the Chicago White Sox, took the scoreboard to new heights.

  One of the most promotional minded of all owners, Veeck installed an exploding scoreboard at Comiskey Park. Whenever a White Sox player hit a home run or when the Sox won a ball game, the scoreboard let loose with a wild fireworks display that delighted the fans.

  But not everyone appreciated the innovation. When the board began spewing its fireworks display at the powerful New York Yankees in 1960, the Yanks planned revenge. Led by their manager, Casey Stengel, whose baseball knowledge was matched only by his sense of humor, the Yanks waited until one of their own belted a homer at Comiskey Park. Fittingly, it was slugger Mickey Mantle who rode one out. As the Mick circled the bases, Stengel, Yogi Berra, and several other players lit sparklers and whooped it up from the dugout. Take that, scoreboard, they were saying.

  Veeck's scoreboard still does its act today and was a forerunner of the multi-million-dollar boards that are an important part of all the new ballparks built in the 1970s and 1980s.

  The Houston Astros and New York Mets were both National League expansion teams in 1962. Then, however, the Astros were known as the Colt 45s. Of course, being expansion clubs and stocked with tired veterans and untried rookies, neither team did very well.

  A year later, nothing much had changed. And with the season all but finished, someone in the Colt 45s' publicity office had a bright idea. On September 27, 1963, the Houston club started an all-rookie lineup at Colt Stadium. Club officials figured they had a chance to win with this unusual lineup because the Colt 45s were playing the even less successful Mets.

  Unfortunately, the strategy didn't work. Starting pitcher Jay Dahl lasted only three innings and the Mets went on to win easily, 10-3. While Dahl never again appeared in a major league game, some of the other Houston rookies who played that day went on to successful careers. Baseball fans will easily recognize the names of Rusty Staub, Jerry Grote, Jimmy Wynn, and Joe Morgan. Everyone has to start somewhere.

  Bill Veeck tried to start a new trend with a rookie of his own back in 1951. As owner of the hapless St. Louis Browns, Veeck decided to create a little excitement in the midst of another last-place season. On August 19, the Browns were at home entertaining the Detroit Tigers in a doubleheader.

  The first game was uneventful enough. Then came the nightcap. In the Browns' half of the first inning, outfielder Frank Saucier was due to lead off. But a pinch hitter appeared out of the St. Louis dugout. Suddenly, everyone in the ballpark stood to get a closer look. It seemed as if the Browns were sending a small boy up to the plate!

  The batter was only three feet, seven inches tall, weighed sixty-five pounds, and had the number 1/8 on his uniform shirt. Plate umpire Ed Hurley called time immediately and demanded an explanation. That's when Browns' manager Zack Taylor came out of the dugout and showed Hurley a major league contract.

  Meet Eddie Gaedel, a twenty-six-year-old midget, who had actually signed to play for the Browns. Only Bill Veeck would come up with something like this. Umpire Hurley had no choice but to allow Gaedel to bat. The contract was valid and the three-foot, seven-inch player was a legitimate player.

  Gaedel took his place in the batter's box and went into a deep crouch. The strike zone was reduced to microscopic size and Tiger pitcher Bob Cain couldn
't find it. He walked Eddie Gaedel on four pitches, whereupon Manager Taylor sent in a pinch runner.

  No one knows whether Veeck intended to use Gaedel as a pinch hitter in future situations where a walk was needed to help win a game. He didn't get the chance. American League president Will Harridge would not approve Gaedel's playing contract, claiming that Gaedel playing for the Browns came under the heading of "conduct detrimental to baseball."

  So Eddie Gaedel never appeared in a major league game again, but his name will forever be remembered, thanks once more to master showman Bill Veeck. Gaedel, however, would have preferred to remain with the team.

  "I felt like Babe Ruth when I walked out on the field that day," he told reporters.

  Bill Veeck had to rank as the king of crazy promotional ideas. Some of them worked beautifully; others backfired. But no matter what ballclub Veeck was involved with, the fans knew he would make it interesting.

  Just five days after the Eddie Gaedel incident, Veeck was at it again. For an August 24, 1951, game against the Philadelphia Athletics, Veeck announced that some 1,000 or so fans would be allowed to manage the Browns for one night. The "managers" sat behind the Browns' dugout and were given flash cards saying "yes" and "no." Whenever a decision had to be made, the "managers" were asked and would respond by holding up the flash cards. A quick count would determine what the club would do.

  The grandstand managers made two lineup changes and the players they inserted wound up with four runs batted in. When St. Louis starter Ned Garver gave up five hits in the first inning, the club asked the managers if a new pitcher should warm up. The vote was no and Garver settled down to allow just two hits the rest of the way as the Browns won the game, 5-3.

  It had to be the only game in major league history where the fans made the key decisions that determined the outcome. Leave it to Bill Veeck.

  Stories about Bill Veeck's promotions go on and on. In Cleveland, during the 1948 season, the owner saw a letter in a local newspaper in which a fan named Joe Earley wrote that players shouldn't be the only ones given a special night. Veeck picked up on it and a short time later more than 60,000 fans came to huge Municipal Stadium for "Good Old Joe Earley Night."

  The surprised letter writer was presented with a new car and numerous other gifts on the field before the game. Even the fans got gifts that night and the first 20,000 women to enter the stadium were given special orchids flown in from Hawaii. Whenever Bill Veeck did something, he did it big.

  Of course, not all Bill Veeck's ideas were so great. In July of 1979, when Veeck owned the White Sox, he got together with a Chicago disc jockey and decided to have a night in which fans could protest against disco music. He would give them a chance to burn disco records in a bonfire out in center field at Comiskey Park. Admission to the game was just ninety-eight cents.

  Naturally, more than 50,000 fans showed up and before long they got out of hand. The White Sox were playing a doubleheader against Detroit and the fire was supposed to take place between games. Only it didn't take long for the fans to realize the records they had brought resembled frisbees. Before long, records were flying all over the place, in the stands and out onto the field. The umpires had to stop the game several times to clear the records off the field. Soon firecrackers were exploding and more than just records were being thrown.

  Still, between games, the promoters tried to stage the record-burning ceremony. It was a farce. About 7,000 fans surged onto the field and began running wild. More police had to be called to the stadium. Even Veeck himself got on the PA system and urged the fans to clear the field. It didn't work.

  The promotion turned out to be a disaster. A number of people were arrested and several hurt. And to top it all off, the umpires decided the second game could not be played under dangerous conditions and forfeited it to Detroit. So, thanks to a bad idea, the Sox even lost a ball game.

  That wasn't the only time fans on the field presented a problem. But sometimes the situation stayed under control and was ultimately a fun time. Back in 1935, Cincinnati's Larry MacPhail decided to bring night baseball to the major leagues. He set up lights at Crosley Field in Cincinnati and got permission from the league to schedule seven night games during the season.

  It went so well that by the time the sixth game rolled around, MacPhail decided to do a little extra to promote it. The Reds would be playing the St. Louis Cardinals. The colorful Cardinal team was known as the "Gas House Gang." The Cards were also defending world champs and drew big crowds wherever they played.

  Already anticipating a big crowd, MacPhail also set up special excursion trains and buses to bring in people from the entire Ohio Valley. By game time there was an overflow crowd at Crosley and they were still coming in. Before play had even started, the fans pushed through the barriers and began ringing the field.

  It was an unbelievable sight. People were three and four deep down the foul lines, around the catcher, and behind the outfielders. The fans moved right into the Cincinnati dugout, forcing the players to sit against the backstop. Every time a Cardinal player came to bat a lane had to be opened through the crowd.

  As the game started, the situation was becoming dangerous. Players couldn't chase fouls, and any ball hit into the crowd behind the outfielders was an automatic double. The people were pressing so close to home plate that the batters were coming within a few feet of hitting someone in the head. Yet the game continued.

  Though it was a wild and unusual way to play a baseball game, the Cardinal players didn't really mind. With characters such as Dizzy Dean, Pepper Martin, Leo Durocher, and Ducky Medwick, the players worked the crowd, joking with the fans all game. Mealwick began a running conversation with an attractive blond-haired woman. First they talked, then argued, then talked some more. Then in the eighth inning the blonde suddenly walked toward home plate, grabbed a bat out of the hands of Cincinnati's Babe Herman, and announced that she was going to hit.

  The umpires looked at each other as the Cardinal players doubled up with laughter. Dizzy Dean's brother, Paul, was on the mound for the Cards and the woman came up wigwagging the bat and demanding that he pitch. Urged on by his teammates, Paul tossed one up underhanded and she hit a little squibbier right back to him. As if acting by instinct, he threw her out at first and the crowd roared with delight.

  As it turned out, the woman was a local nightclub performer named Kitty Burke. She kept telling Medwick that she could hit better than he could and he went along with the stunt. She actually wanted the publicity and not long after was hired by a Cincinnati nightclub that billed her as the only woman ever to come to bat in a big league ball game.

  Somehow, the game was completed and the fans left without causing any major problems. In spite of that wild night in Cincinnati, night baseball was on the scene for good, one of baseball's great ideas that worked.

  Another constant source of wild ideas was the front office of Charles O. Finley, the flamboyant owner of the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics in the 1960s and '70s. Finley was the kind of owner who liked to call all the shots and perhaps that explains why he went through managers the way a fish goes through water quickly and easily.

  Yet when Charles Finley moved his team to Oakland in the late 1960s, he built a powerhouse, a club that won five straight American League Western Division titles and three consecutive World Series. It was when Finley's team was losing, both on the field and at the box office in Kansas City in the 1960s, that the owner came up with his craziest promotional ideas.

  Perhaps the strangest one was the construction of a "Pennant Porch" in right field at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City. Finley claimed that the dimensions of Yankee Stadium, with its short rightfield fence, gave the New York hitters a big advantage and helped turn the Yanks into a perennial powerhouse.

  Finley decided to duplicate the Yankee Stadium dimensions in his own ballpark. He moved the foul pole in right field from 338 feet to 325 feet, which was the league minimum for newer parks. Then he angled the fence toward ho
me plate until it was just 296 feet away, the same as at Yankee Stadium. From there, the fence angled out to fight center, duplicating the angle of the fence in New York.

  The Pennant Porch stayed up for two exhibition games. Then Commissioner Ford Frick and American League president Joe Cronin ordered it removed. But Finley wasn't finished. He tried to get away with half of a Pennant Porch, then he constructed a bleacher roof

  that jutted over the field to the 296 foot mark. When that was ordered down, he erected a forty-foot-high screen in right. If he couldn't help his own hitters, he'd put a barrier up for the opposing hitters.

  That, too, was ordered down. Baseball officials couldn't let an owner alter the dimensions of his ballpark every time he had a whim. But Charles O. Finley tried. In fact, he would try many things before he finally sold the team and left baseball.

  Even when he finally found success in Oakland, Charles Finley continued to try new ideas. In the early 1970s, the Oakland team was full of stars, such as Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Bert Campanetis, Vida Blue, Joe Rudi, and Roilie Fingers, but owner Finley always managed to stay in the news.

  He introduced colorful, gold and green uniforms. Baseball traditionalists frowned. For years, the home team had worn white and the visitors gray. But Finley persisted, and colorful uniforms soon began appearing all over both leagues. The new uniforms certainly looked better on color television.

  Another of his fun promotions was "Mustache Day." Every man coming to the ballpark that day was to have grown a mustache. Finley included his ballplayers in the gimmick and they complied, as did stern manager Dick Williams.

  The promotion was not only a success, but the A's players and Manager Williams kept their mustaches and started a trend. In the early days of the game, players had often worn big handlebar mustaches. But when the A's grew facial hair in the early 1970s, players had been clean shaven for years. Finley helped reverse the cycle. Today, many players wear mustaches and beards. In fact, one of Finley's own players back then, relief star Roilie Fingers, grew an old-fashioned handlebar mustache, which became his trademark, one he retained long after leaving the A's.