Hall of Shame: Part Two

                                              I did a post about the Hall of Shame a short while ago, most of the bloopers featuring the Dodgers in Brooklyn and LA. This chapter will feature bloopers from just about any team listed in the book. Thought it would be a fun read and hope you get as big a kick out of the happenings as I did. Baseball news is usually pretty slow until the first big free agent shoe drops, and that has not happened yet, so here we go.

                                                         One of the more infamous happenings in baseball was Disco Demolition night at a game between the White Sox and Tigers. The promotion was dreamed up by Chicago DJ, Steve Dahl, who along with his legion of listeners, hated disco. He pitched the idea to Mike Veeck, son of the ailing Sox owner, Bill Veeck, who had in his time owning baseball teams ran some interesting promotions including having a midget bat during a game. 

                                                         The idea was to blow up a pile of disco records in center field between games of a twi-night doubleheader at Comiskey Park. Veeck green lighted the idea. Fans who brought records to be demolished would be charged 98 cents admission. The radio stations frequency was 97.6. They estimated that the promotion would draw maybe 5,000 more fans for the game. They seriously underestimated Chicagoans dislike of disco. More than 50,000 fans showed up. The stands were packed. 

                                                         Unexpectedly, Veeck had checked himself out of the hospital and show up at the ballpark. ” What is going on? he asked. ” I am worried about this promotion; it could be catastrophic.”  Father knows best. When no more fans could get in, some outside brought ladders so many more could get in if they wanted. It wasn’t long before fans found out the similarity between records and a frisbee. Some were thrown on the field, and they would sail around the players and stick in the ground. There were several halts to game one as records were cleared from the field. The Tigers won game one, 4-1 and everyone got ready for the demolition. 

                                                        Dahl walked on to the field wearing an army uniform. He worked the crowd into a frenzy yelling “disco sucks”. A busty blonde then triggered the explosion and boom; debris was sent 200 feet into the air with a very loud boom. Fans must have taken this as a signal to storm the field, they tore up chunks of grass, stole home plate, uprooted the pitcher’s mound, and trashed the batting cage. Veeck and Roland Hemmond, the GM, pleaded over the PA system for the fans to stop. Guards outside the stadium were there to keep those fans from storming the fences. 

Crowd sets rejected records on fire at Disco Demolition night, Comiskey, Park, Chicago, Illinois, July 12th, 1979

                                                         Finally, Veeck had to call the cops, helmeted officers appeared and cleared the field relatively quickly making 50 arrests. But the field was a mess. As luck would have it, the supervisor of umpires, Nestor Chylak, was in attendance that night. He had also been the chief umpire five years earlier in Cleveland on Veeck’s disastrous 10-cent beer night. After meeting with Veeck, the umpires and Tigers manager, Sparky Anderson, the Sox forfeited the game. Mike Veeck would later say because although rowdy, the crowd was mostly nonviolent, ” What was great is that the kids were stoned. Had they been drunk, we would have had a real problem.” Hemmond said later” It was a great promotion; we are still talking about it.” Methinks he was just a bit off base there. They talk about it for all the wrong reasons. 

                                                         Some MLB debuts are very good, others not so much. Billy Herman, who is in the Hall of Fame, had a rather inauspicious debut in the majors. Herman was making his debut with the Cubs on August 29th, 1931, against the Reds at Wrigley Field. Herman was determined to show that he belonged in the majors. In his first at bat, he singled off of Red’s hurler, Si Johnson, much to the delight of the Wrigley faithful. In his next at bat, Herman, full of confidence, swung mightily at Johnson’s first pitch. The ball went straight down hitting the back of the plate, bouncing up and hitting Herman right in the back of the head. 

                                                        A player who would spend 16 years in the majors and have a lifetime BA of .304 and be elected to the Hall of Fame, was knocked cold by his own foul ball. It was for him at least a forgettable way to debut in the majors. Herman was carted off the field on a stretcher. There is a small Dodger connection here. Herman played for the Brooklyn Dodgers for parts of 4 seasons in the 40’s and he would return to the team as a coach from 1952-57, earning a World Series ring with the 55 team.

                                                        Dodger fans know well how tough Nolan Ryan could be. In his career, Ryan threw 7 no-hitters. On July 15th, 1973, at Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Ryan was having one of those games. Norm Cash, the Tigers slugging first baseman, had struck out his first two at bats against “The Ryan Express.” In his third AB, Cash at least got wood on the ball, grounding out. In the 9th inning, the Tigers were still without a hit. Mickey Stanley led off the inning grounding out to Angel SS, Rudy Meoli. Willie Horton hit a soft liner to Meoli for the second out. Cash had gone down into the Tiger clubhouse and found an old table leg and strode to the plate with the leg on his shoulder.

                                                       Ryan at that point already had 17 strikeouts in the game. Cash dug in with the table leg on his shoulder, everyone was getting a big laugh out of it. Finally, plate umpire, Ron Luciano, told Cash he needed to get a bat. Cash replied, ” But Ron, I’ve got as much chance with this as I do a bat.” He went back to the dugout and got a bat and stepped back into the batter’s box. He immediately popped out to Meoli and Ryan had his 2nd no-hitter. On his way back to the dugout he told Luciano ” See, I told you so.” Cash was not the first player to come to bat with a wacky bat. In a game in 1929, Rabbit Maranville came to bat with a tennis racquet to try and break a personal slump against Dazzy Vance. He too failed. 

                                                         Strange things could happen during spring training too. During spring training in 1915, Robins manager, Wilbert Robinson overheard some of his players talking about a feat accomplished by Senators catcher, Gabby Street in 1908. On his 13th try, Street caught a ball dropped from the Washington Monument, a distance of 500 feet. The manager took this as a personal challenge. “That’s nothing, I can catch a baseball dropped even higher from an airplane.”

                                                          Team trainer, Jack Coombs, a wizard with figures, calculated the velocity and force of a baseball dropped from 600 feet and deduced that it would be dangerous. Robinson scoffed, wanting to be the first in aviation and baseball history to perform the feat. Combs climbed into a biplane in the seat behind pioneer woman aviator, Ruth Law. Law told Coombs that she had forgotten the baseball, and that one of her crew had substituted a grapefruit.

                                                           Here is where the story gets a bit murky. Outfielder, Casey Stengel, said that he was the one who substituted the grapefruit and that he was on the plane and dropped the fruit. He later recanted that version. Casey was known for his quirky humor. Whomever it was, they took off and the grapefruit was dropped instead of a baseball. As it plummeted towards Robinson, he was yelling, “I got it, I got it.” The orb got larger and larger. Still thinking it was a baseball, Robinson planted himself under it. The grapefruit hit his glove and burst, sending seeds and juice and pieces of fruit everywhere. 

                                                            The impact tore the glove off of his hand and flipped him on his back. Feeling the warm juice on his face, Robinson thought he was bleeding and called for help. Players rushed to his aid, but once they saw he was not hurt, they burst out laughing. Robinson though was fuming. He had risked his life over a grapefruit and not an official baseball. ” I’d have caught it.” he said. “except for that damn cloudburst of grapefruit juice.”

                                                               Talk about being forgetful, Babe Herman, now a member of the Reds, headed home after his team beat the visiting Cardinals. Just one problem, Babe left his 7-year-old son at the ballpark. He didn’t mean to do it, he just plum forgot. About six weeks after the Dodgers traded him to the Reds, Babe was caring for Bobby while his wife stayed in Brooklyn tending to his 2-year-old son, Danny, who was ill. 

                                                                On April 27th, 1932, Babe took Bobby to Crosley Field with him and got him a box seat. He told the boy to wait for him back of the grandstands after the game. With his son cheering him on, Babe had 2 singles, a double, scoring a run and driving in one, also stealing a base in the Reds 6-4 win. He then showered and shaved while mentally replaying his day. Still on cloud nine, he hitched a ride home with Red’s manager, Dan Howley. 

                                                                Meanwhile, Bobby dutifully did what he was told and waited for his no-show dad standing outside the ballpark. With Herman almost home, Howley turned to him and said “Geez, we forgot the kid!” They called the ballpark and found out that the team secretary had found Bobby and was bringing him home. Recalled Herman with a chuckle, ” I guess I had too much on my mind that day.”

                                                                Last story in this post involves an incident many of you may have seen. April 24, 1994, at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers were hosting the Montreal Expos. The baseball season itself would shortly be stopped by the players strike that would cancel the rest of the season. But on this day, the game went on as scheduled. There was one out in the third inning and the Dodgers had a man on first with Mike Piazza at the plate. 

                                                               Piazza hit a high fly down the right field line, Expos right fielder, Larry Walker, made a routine catch. In a thoughtful gesture, he went over to the stands and handed the ball to a young fan, forgetting that it was only the second out. He turned around to see Jose Offerman sprinting towards third and his teammates yelling at him. He retrieved the ball from the fan and fired to third, keeping Offerman from scoring. 

                                                               The next hitter, Tim Wallach, hit a 2-run homer. When he returned to right field the next inning, he gave the young fan a replacement baseball and was cheered by the Dodger faithful for doing so. He was also cheered each time he came to bat. In an otherwise forgetful Expos 7-1 loss, he made it a huge memory for a young Dodger fan. On August 11th, the players went on strike, and no more memories would be made until the following year. Fans were pretty upset with the players, and it took a while to regain their trust.