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239 pages

English

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No other sport can begin to compare to the rich history and statistical record of baseball. It is part of what makes the game so alluring. In “Moments in Baseball History,” Mark R. Brewer examines twenty-two memorable games and the player at the center of that game. It should prove a feast for baseball fans.

Sujets

Sports

Recreation

History

Baseball

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Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	29 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781669855309
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	6 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Also by Mark R. Brewer
Squire William’s Lucky Day
In the Days of Lourde William
Swim, Surrender, or Die: The Union Army at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff
For Virginia: John Wilkes Booth, Thomas J. Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, Edmund Ruffin and the Civil War
Moments in History: People and Events Worth Remembering
Because: A Fan Picks His Top 40 Songs by the Fab Four
Moments in History II: More People and Events Worth Remembering

MOMENTS IN BASEBALL HISTORY

Players and Games Worth Remembering

Mark R. Brewer

Copyright © 2022 by Mark R. Brewer.

ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-5531-6
eBook
978-1-6698-5530-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/29/2022

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
848540

To my friends and family who are hardcore baseball fans:
Tom Bailey
Jeff Brewer
Stephen Brewer
Roger Brodmerkel
Steve Castellano
Tom Disher
Skip Drinkwater
Marshall Green
Joseph Jones
Max Nolan
James Pensabene
Evan Syzmanski
Jason Syzmanski
Alan Taylor
John Tockstein
Steve White
Thanks for all the chatter.

INTRODUCTION
It is the great American game, the National Pastime. No other sport can compete with the deep history and almost endless statistics of baseball. It also has no clock. It will end when it ends. It calls to mind long summer days of youthful innocence, seasons that stretch on and on into autumn, and players and pennant races long past. No comeback is impossible.
My own love for baseball began in the summer of 1967. My family is from Worcester, Massachusetts originally. I have been told that my grandfather on my mother’s side, James William “Willie” Congdon, was a huge Boston Braves fan. My own father was not a big baseball fan, but he kept saying to me that summer, “Have you been following the Red Sox?” They had finished ninth out of ten teams in 1966, but that summer of ’67, the Summer of Love, the Sox were making a serious run for the pennant. They would win it on the last day of the season. By the time they did, I was a major fan of the Red Sox and their star, Carl Yastrzemski, who won the Triple Crown that year.
Simultaneously, I had become friends with two twin brothers who were in the same grade as me, Joe and Eric Frueh. They casually asked me one afternoon if I wanted to play Strat-O-Matic. I said I didn’t know what that was. “You never heard of Strat-O-Matic?” Joe asked me incredulously. And so was born my introduction to table-top baseball and baseball stats. I became an instant junkie.
Baseball has brought me so many moments both of soaring joy and burning sorrow—just like life itself. I love the game more than I can express.
I once asked a missionary from my Church if there was baseball in heaven. “Would it be heaven without it?” she replied.
It would not.
Mark R. Brewer
January 2023

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, I must thank my brother, Michael A. Brewer, for his proofreading and editing of all my books, including this one. I am also grateful for his encouragement. He has definitely made this a better book. I am so thankful for my wife Laurie and my son Nick, who have listened to me ramble on about each chapter as I work on it. Their love and support, along with that of my daughter Madeline, is that which I most cherish in this world.
I must also give a shout out to two outstanding websites, Baseball Reference and the Society for American Baseball Research . They literally put the entire history of baseball at one’s fingertips. The fact that the two sites are linked makes research that much easier and enjoyable.

“A hot dog at the game beats roast beef at the Ritz”
Humphrey Bogart

CONTENTS
Introduction
Acknowledgements

1 The Firebrand
2 The Greatest Game
3 Fleet
4 Our Johnny
5 Sir Hugh
6 Big Ed
7 Matty
8 Bonehead
9 The Longest Game
10 Chappie
11 The Big Train
12 The Black Babe Ruth
13 Gabby
14 Pete
15 Cool Papa Bell
16 Eddie
17 The Shot
18 Herb
19 Whitey
20 Harvey
21 Ole Satch
22 Dock

Notes
Bibliography

ONE
THE FIREBRAND
Friday, September 3, 1869
Jefferson Street Ball Park
25 th and Jefferson Streets
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2:45 P.M.
A large crowd had gathered to witness the game. They had come from all around, arriving on horseback, in carriages, and on foot. The Deseret News out of Utah stated that attendance was “immense.” Estimates said more than 4,000 people had come to see an unprecedented ballgame. Nothing quite like it had ever happened before at any location in the country. It was, as the New York Times reported, “the first game played between a white and a colored club.”
The home team took the field precisely at 2:45 P.M. They wore a uniform of dark blue pants, white shirts, and caps that one observer described as “neat.” They were known as the Philadelphia Pythians. ( 1 ) The manager and second baseman of the Pythians was Octavius V. Catto, a thirty-year-old black man. ( 2 ) Catto was a teacher of Mathematics and English ( 3 ) at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia (now Cheney University). ( 4 ) He would later become the school’s principal. ( 5 ) In addition, he was a civil rights activist. ( 6 ) He has been called a firebrand on and off the field. ( 7 )
Catto had, for some time, wanted the Pythians to test their mettle against a white ball club. ( 8 ) He believed that a game against “our white brethren” would help to improve race relations. ( 9 ) Earlier that summer, The City Item , a newspaper owned by Thomas Fitzgerald, published a letter calling for a white club to play the Pythians. Such a game would afford the whites “serviceable practice,” the letter stated. “I learn that the Pythians are composed of the most worthy young men among our colored population. Who will put the ball in motion?”

Figure 1 Octavius Catto in 1871
Several white teams agreed to play the Pythians but later backed out. Finally, the Philadelphia Olympics agreed to the game. The Olympics were the oldest sports organization in the country, having been formed in 1838. ( 10 ) They required that the game be played at their home grounds at 25 th and Jefferson Streets. ( 11 ) A flip of a coin went the Pythians way, and they chose to be the home team.
Thomas Fitzgerald agreed to be the umpire for the contest, but his task was not to determine if a ball was fair or foul or whether a runner was out or safe. The teams would decide that. Fitzgerald was there in the event that the two teams could not agree. Either team could then appeal to him and he would have the final say.
Catto, however, told his players not to make any appeals. Perhaps he was concerned that the white players would not enjoy having their honesty questioned. It would certainly help to avoid any confrontations on the field of play. ( 12 )
The first batter of the game, the Olympics’ second baseman Kerns, hit a ball in the air out toward Octavius Catto, who caught it for an out. And so, the game got underway. Catto also caught a ball for the final out of the first inning, but in between, the Olympics scored a run.
In the bottom of the inning, the Pythians’ leadoff hitter and pitcher John Cannon got a hit. Catto followed with another hit. Clarke, the Pythians’ catcher, apparently followed with a triple that scored both runners, but then Clarke, according to the account in the Philadelphia Inquirer , was “caught napping at third after making his base by a clean hit.” It seems he was picked off. The Pythians scored one more run to give them a 3-1 lead after one inning. It was the only lead they would have all day.
In the top of the second inning, the Olympics, “saw that they had no easy job before them and went to work with a will,” scoring eight runs. The Pythians answered with two in the bottom of the inning, making the score 9-5 Olympics. But then things got out of hand when the Olympics scored fourteen runs in the top of the third inning. The Pythians spent the rest of the game trying to play catchup, but the Olympics kept adding on.
The mixed-race crowd was “very orderly” until the ninth inning, when many people broke through the restraining ropes that held them back and pushed onto the playing field. “The ninth inning,” said the Inquirer , “was, therefore, played under great difficulty, and it was only with trouble that the scorers could see the game.” The final tally was Olympics 44, Pythians 23. But the Pythians “acquitted themselves in a very credible manner, especially their outfielders, who made several very fine fly catches.” ( 13 )
Umpire Fitzgerald wrote that the Pythians could have appealed several plays, but they chose not “to note important points in the game. For instance, they allowed two Olympics to score who neglected to touch home plate.” Fitzgerald added that the Olympics