One Highlight
and One Lowlight
Often
when I have the opportunity to speak to young people, I use actual real life
experiences taken from my baseball career to illustrate particular points. I speak of both “highlights” and “lowlights”
of my career. I rarely do this in
Pitching For The Master, but I am going to write about what is perhaps the
greatest highlight of my baseball career, but I will follow this quickly with a
lowlight that falls within the same context.
This illustrates perfectly the “ups” and “downs” of baseball, and also
of life itself.
My
Greatest Highlight
Before
I write about the greatest highlight of my career, it is necessary to give a
brief background. I had just come off of two subpar seasons
with the St. Louis Cardinals. In December
of 1962, I was traded to the Cubs along with Larry Jackson, my teammate with
the Cardinals for seven years. In
exchange the Cardinals received George Altman and Don Cardwell. Some baseball experts were saying that my
career was basically over. But to the
surprise of the baseball world, and the Cardinals, I made a big comeback in
1963 with the Cubs and won my second “fireman of the year award”. That year against the Cardinals I pitched 25
innings, giving up no runs, 10 hits and picked up several wins and saves which
was a major factor in their failing to win the pennant.
Because
of its spectacular nature, I call this my greatest highlight in baseball, but
that may not be strictly true in terms of actual importance. But it did make big headlines in Chicago and all
over the country. This unusual event
occurred on June Sixth, 1963 when I was playing for the Chicago
Cubs. This occurred on a Sunday
afternoon and was the last game of a four game series against the San Francisco
Giants. The Giants had won the National
League Pennant the year before. The game
was played in historic Wrigley Field.
The Giants came to town leading the league by four games. The Cubs were in second place at the time. All four games were played before a packed
ballpark. The Cubs won the first
three games of the series. I picked up a “save” in one
of those games. A “save” is when you
come into the game as a relief pitcher with a lead and are able to preserve the
win.
In
the fourth game, on a beautiful sunny afternoon, Dick Ellsworth started the
game for the Cubs and after 9 innings the score was tied 2 to 2. In the top of the tenth inning, the Giants
had loaded the bases with one out. This
is when I was brought into the game. After completing my 8 warm-up pitches, the game was resumed. I took Dick Bertell’s (the catcher) sign from
behind the rubber as I would normally do in a full wind up delivery. Dick flashed me the sign for a pick-off play
at second base. The play works
like this. If Andre Rogers, our short-stop,
thinks that he can sneak behind the runner at second, He gives a sign to the catcher, who then
relays the sign to me. I get the sign
with a relaxed stance and act like I am about to go into my normal windup. Bertell then flops his catcher's mitt down, and I immediately wheel and throw to second. The catcher does this as soon as he sees
daylight between shortstop and the base-runner. Willie Mays is the runner and is two short steps away from the bag. The throw caught him totally by
surprise and he was tagged for the second out! He never moved. The next batter Ed Bailey, hitting from the
left side of the plate, struck out swinging on three straight “fork-ball” pitches. I received my first standing ovation after
picking Willie Mays off second base. I
received a second standing ovation when I walked off the mound after striking
out Ed Bailey on three pitches. Of
course, I couldn’t do it by myself. It
takes the shortstop, the catcher, and some cooperation from the
base-runner.
I
was the lead-off hitter in the bottom of the 10th inning. With a two ball and one strike count, I hit a
slider off of Billy Pierce deep into the left-center field bleachers for a
homerun. The crowd went absolutely
wild! The entire ball club met me at
home plate. We were tied with the Giants
for first place! That was the beginning
of the down fall for the Giants and they never recovered from this blow. The next day the Chicago Tribune newspaper
had the entire sequence of my picking Willie Mays off of second base. The paper stated that Willie had fined
himself $500 when he reached the Giant’s dugout. At the beginning of this article is the
photo of my coming to home plate after hitting the home run. All of this happened in quick succession and
took only about 15-20 minutes. Not a bad
afternoon’s work at the “friendly confines of Wrigley Field” as Ernie Banks
would call it. For one brief moment all was joy in Chicago land.
Followed
By A Lowlight
A
few days later, the Cubs were playing against the Houston Colts, now called the
Houston Astros, in Colt Stadium. I entered the game in the bottom of the nineth
inning with score tied, bases loaded and no outs. The hitter was Bob Aspromonte. All he had to do was hit a long fly ball, the
runner tags up at third and scores for the winning run. I pitched Bob inside to try to get a
pop-up. He was evidently looking for
the pitch inside, for it was just off the strike zone, but he opened up his
stance, swung and hit a home run. Seems
like in 1963, the bases were loaded almost every time I entered the game. That year I gave up three grand slam homeruns
and each one was freaky in some way. I
also led the league in relief pitching for the most wins and saves and received
the fireman’s award. But even so, it was strange to give up those three grand slam home runs. This is how they occurred.
I gave up one grand slam homerun in Chicago to
Hank Aaron, the great hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. I remember it well. Why is it that I always remember such things? I threw him a fast ball low and away which
would have been a perfect strike on the corner. He swung and popped the ball up to Ken Hubs, our second baseman. It was a very high pop-up. The second baseman started drifting back on
the ball. The right fielder came
slightly in, then floated back, all the way to the outfield wall. The ball hit the top of the wall and bounced into the right field bleachers for a home run. Oh, I forgot to
tell you one small fact, the wind was blowing 40 miles per hour towards right field! My
wife was sitting behind home plate directly behind Lew Burdette, who was charting the
pitches, and the starting Brave pitcher for the next game. He turned around and said to her, “On
some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed . . does it!” Later Lew Burdette was traded to the Cubs and we had some interesting conversations. He told me one time that you never really get to know a person until after they are drunk. That is why it is so hard to use a lot of baseball material in my preaching. But let me finish my story.
On
another occasion that year the Cubs were playing the Mets in the old Polo Grounds in New York. I was brought into the game in the bottom of
the ninth inning with the bases loaded.
There were two outs. The Cubs had
a one run lead. Jim Hickman, a fellow
Oklahoman, was the batter. The Met fans were screaming their heads
off. I got to a 3 ball 2 strike count
on the hitter. If I walked the batter, the game would be tied. The fans were yelling so
loud that it was hard to even concentrate.
I threw a fastball inside. It would have been a ball if the batter had not swung. But the pitch was too close to take. In those situations there is as much pressure on the hitter as on the pitcher. Hickman swung and his bat broke into two
pieces. The ball traveled straight down
the left field line. Billy Williams,
our left fielder, got under the ball and
waited for it to come down. It was a sure out. In the Polo
Grounds, the left field wall was only 252 feet down the line. Oddly enough the upper deck overhangs the lower stands. The ball just nicked the lower facing of the
upper deck for a grand slam home run! Another sad day at the old ball park. Then we had to walk all the way to the clubhouse in center field among all the yelling and screaming.
Now
getting back to the Bob Aspromonte home-run.
In about 2008, I happened to read an article in the Reader’s Digest on Aspromonte
and he commented on this same 1963 event. The article
relates a great story about Bob visiting a young man in a hospital. The young man had a terminal illness and was
not expected to live much longer. The kid was
a big Colt 45 (Houston Colts) baseball fan.
He asked Bob to hit a home run for him.
Bob promised that he would try.
That was the home run that he hit off of me! Now how can I complain about that? After all those
years, I don’t feel nearly so bad about giving up that home run! I have always said that real life is stranger
than fiction and it really is.
Here
is a side note about Bob Aspromonte. As
many of you know, my brother Von and I were teammates together with the St.
Louis Cardinals in 1957. After my
brother had arm trouble in 1958, he was sent down to the minors where he spend
9 years before retiring. The closest he
got to the Big Leagues again was in 1962 as a third baseman in the Astro
organization. Von was the last man cut
from the spring training roster that year.
The player who beat him out was Bob Aspromonte. Life is really strange.
Folks,
this is basically an article about baseball, but in many respects it is also an
article about life. Life has many twists
and turns. Only in your dreams is life
smooth and easy. Life was never
intended to be easy, for it is a testing ground. The only way to safely
navigate life is to listen to God and trust in Him with all of your heart. In my next article, I will leave the field
of dreams and get back to the full reality of life in Jesus Christ, my #1
interest. Because, folks, if we don’t
get that right, none of the rest is going to matter.
***
The
photo at the beginning of this article was taken on June 6, 1963 as I was
touching home plate after hitting the game winning home run. The entire team met me at home plate.
If you would like to be placed on my e-mail list to receive attachments of Pitching For The Master articles, you can contact me at lindymcdaniel77@reagan.com.
Special
note: A baseball researcher friend of
mine sent me a list of all the home runs I gave up in my career. There was a list of 172 home runs, with
dates, places, teams, hitter, number of men on base, etc. I am not sure that was a great ego booster!! Usually those are facts you would rather
forget. But there were some very
interesting things about these lists. Of
the 172 home runs, 60% came with the bases empty, 24.5% came with 1 runner on
base, 10.2% came with 2 runners on base, and 4.8% came with the bases
loaded. I gave up a total of 8 bases
loaded home runs in my career. So the
three bases loaded home runs I gave up in 1963, which I mention in this article, comprised
about 37% of the total number I gave up in 20 years. And yet I was the most effective relief
pitcher in the National League that year.
My friend also informed me that the great Hall of Fame pitcher, Robin
Roberts, usually lead the league in homers given up, but most of those were
with the bases empty. I think there must
be a pitching theory in there somewhere.
One of these days I will try to explain it.
