Ballplayers Sought Off-the-Field Homers Too
PLUS: REMEMBERING THE FIRST 300-GAME WINNER
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Reader Reacts
“Actually, there WAS a ballpark named for a player, although it was a century ago. Bennett Park in Detroit was named after Charlie Bennett, who caught for the old Detroit Wolverines of the NL all eight years of their existence, 1881-88. His playing career ended after the 1893 season when both legs were amputated after he had been run over by a train.
“Bennett Park was used by the Detroit Creams of the Western League starting in 1896. The Creams were renamed the Tigers. The Western League was renamed the American League in 1900 and the AL declared itself a major league in 1901. The ballpark was used through the 1911 season, when it was torn down and Navin Field/Briggs Stadium/Tiger Stadium was built on the same site, just with home plate reoriented elsewhere.”
— Mark Pattison, Washington, DC
The writer grew up in Detroit but never went to a game at Bennett Park.
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
Aging set-up reliever Adam Ottavino, now 38, lost a $2.2 million gamble when he rejected a $6.75 player option, found no takers on the free agent market, and slinked back to the Mets on a one-year, $4.5 million pact . . .
The Cubs were seeking offensive help even before the rival Brewers signed former Phillies slugger Rhys Hoskins . . .
Wonder why Toronto signed ancient Justin Turner rather than pay a little more for Jorge Soler or J.D. Martinez . . .
After spending his whole career in Cincinnati, Joey Votto could also wind up in the uniform of the Blue Jays, his hometown team . . .
Hard to believe nobody signed Cody Bellinger or Blake Snell, the top two free agents this winter, with two weeks to go before pitchers and catchers report.
Leading Off
Celebrity swingo
Baseball players have, ahem, entangled with celebrities, too
By Jeff Kallman
There have been moments the past month when you might have thought the only sports story was whatever new between song-writing singer Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Heaven help us if the Chiefs, suddenly the team America seems to love to hate, lose the Super Bowl. Whatever actually happens on the field, it’ll be her fault.
Bad enough: I have limited options for getting out and about come Super Bowl week and weekend. I live in Las Vegas and they’re playing the game in that ghastly tub known as Allegiant Stadium, usually the home of the Raiders. Whatever I do, I don’t dare be caught within four miles of the tub.
Worse: reminding myself that baseball players and celebrities romanced long enough before anyone ever heard of Swift with or without Kelce. Long enough and, sometimes, controversially enough. The NFL isn’t even close to being a pioneer of athletic romantic soap uproar.
Was it that long ago that baseball fans looked askance at future Hall of Fame pitcher Justin Verlander courting and marrying actress/model Kate Upton? You couldn’t always tell whether people envied the couple or harbored horrible thoughts about them.
Verlander wasn’t even close to being the first baseball player to find himself in love with, marrying, and having a child with a woman who was the object of fantasies enough. He won’t even be close to the last.
Before you begin demanding a cease-and-desist upon ballplayers entangling with the female glitterati, have a gander at some of the history thereof, for better or worse:
Lefty Gomez—The Yankee pitching great married Broadway star June O’Dea (You Said It; Of Thee I Sing) in 1933. The marriage hit shaky ground for a spell in 1937, but separation moves stopped in 1938. (A mutual friend, boxing legend Jack Dempsey, aided the reconciliation.) The couple went on to have three children and a 54-year marriage that ended only when Gomez died in 1989.
Joe DiMaggio—The Clipper went to the altar with actresses twice: Dorothy Arnold in 1939 (they divorced in 1944 but had DiMaggio’s only child, Joseph, Jr.); and, far more famously, Marilyn Monroe in 1954. That marriage was doomed by a combination of the Hall of Famer’s controlling (sometimes violent) nature and Monroe’s inability to keep a reputed promise to pull away from the Hollywood atmosphere. They divorced after nine months.
DiMaggio is said to have become a somewhat changed man after the divorce, which led to his reconnection with Monroe. Later remarriage rumors (after Monroe’s divorce from playwright Arthur Miller) ended permanently with Monroe’s death in 1962. Legendarily, DiMaggio kept the Hollywood crowd away from her funeral, admonishing one who warned he was barring her close friends, “If it hadn’t been for some of her friends, she wouldn’t be here.”
Leo Durocher—The shortstop-turned-manager was twice divorced when he met actress Laraine Day (Mr. Lucky, the Dr. Kildare film series) and began romancing her—while her divorce from first husband James Ray Hendricks was knotted up. Not wanting to wait out the required full year before remarrying, Day went to Mexico for a second decree and married Durocher in Texas later that day.
You think the Trumpaholics are going MAGAballistic over Swift and Kelce? Part of the Roman Catholic Church went likewise over Durocher and Day. The Catholic Youth Organization’s Brooklyn chapter threatened to boycott the Dodgers for 1947, on grounds Durocher was compromising the morals of Catholic youth by romancing and, in January 1947, marrying Day.
Day’s original divorce decree mandated she wait a full year before remarrying. Since she didn’t want to wait, she obtained a Mexican divorce and married Durocher later the same day, in El Paso, Texas. Thus the CYO boycott threat, which Durocher ended with his yearlong suspension over gambling associations, and Day’s original divorce judge declaring her new marriage illegal.
The couple “remarried” in 1948, the year Durocher moved on to manage the Giants. They adopted two children (Hall of Famer Willie Mays often baby-sat the younger, Chris, on Giants road trips), but they divorced in 1960. Ironically, Day went to Mexico to divorce Durocher, too.
Ralph Kiner—During his early playing days, Kiner was linked to stars such as Elizabeth Taylor (he escorted her to the 1949 premiere of Twelve O’Clock High), Ava Gardner, and Janet Leigh (while the original Angels in the Outfield filmed at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field). Then, he married tennis star Nancy Chaffee in 1951.
They had three children before they divorced in 1968. The Hall of Famer would marry thrice more before his death.
Bo Belinsky—The rakish left-handed pitcher already had a rep as a ladies’ man when he became a star with the 1962 Angels (four straight wins as a rookie, the fourth the first no-hitter thrown by a California-based major-leaguer) . . . and his date book began including such film stars as Ann-Margret, Tina Louise, Connie Stevens, and Mamie Van Doren (briefly his fiancée).
While his star waned as he moved from the Angels to the Phillies to the minors in Hawaii, Belinsky met 1965 Playboy Playmate of the Year Jo Collins. The couple married in 1968 and had a daughter together.
But as Belinsky’s career continued to dissipate before ending in the minors in 1970, and he sank further into alcohol addiction (it took until the 1990s and several failed rehab attempts before he cleaned up completely), the couple divorced in 1971.
Maury Wills—The Dodgers’ 1960s shortstop/road runner was rumored to have more than a friendship with screen legend Doris Day, whom he met at one of the charity events at which the two were frequent visitors and contributors.
Numerous Dodger histories swear then-Dodger GM Buzzie Bavasi ordered Wills to cool it because there could be trouble over a black man dating America’s Sweetheart, but Wills himself has said he and Day were purely close friends with a mutual passion for philanthropy.
Curt Flood—The center fielder who fired baseball’s Second Shot Heard ‘Round the World (which failed at the Supreme Court but lit a fuse) went through a bitter divorce but had met and soon romanced actress Judy Pace. She’d made history as prime time television’s first African-American villianess, in the legendary 1960s nighttime soap Peyton Place.
They dated through 1970, reconnected after a subsequent marriage of hers ended in divorce in 1984, and married in 1986—a marriage that endured until Flood’s death in 1997. Today, Pace advocates for her husband’s election to the Hall of Fame as a baseball pioneer for having started what eventually led to the end of the reserve clause.
Chuck Finley—The longtime Angels left-hander (he also pitched for Cleveland and St. Louis) married actress/rock video star Tawny Kitaen in 1997. They had two daughters together, but the marriage ended in 2002—after Kitaen attacked Finley with her high heel while he drove their car. She admitted later that she was addicted to prescription pain-killers.
Kitaen accused Finley of steroid use, alcohol abuse, and other drugs, none of which were proven, but all of which provoked Finley to needle, “I can’t believe she left out the cross-dressing.” (She died of multiple causes in 2021, awaiting a pre-trial hearing on a DUI charge.) Yes, he was only kidding.
The divorce proceedings provoked a notorious incident in Comiskey Park: the music director played Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”—the video in which Kitaen had starred notoriously with her first husband, Whitesnake singer David Coverdale—as Finley took the mound for the Angels. Finley had a rough outing, possibly as a result. (Eight earned runs surrendered including two homers in less than two innings.)
The White Sox fired the music director and apologized to the pitcher publicly.
Derek Jeter—In his Yankee bachelor days, the Hall of Fame shortstop had a supposed celebrity date book that almost made Bo Belinsky’s resemble amateur hour. Almost.
Mr. November was linked at one or another time to such stars as Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Tyra Banks, Mariah Carey, and Minka Kelly. His only confirmed such relationships may have been with Biel, Carey, and Kelly. (Carey once credited Jeter with giving her the push to divorce her controlling record-executive husband, Tommy Mottola.)
In fact, Jeter and Kelly were an item for four years before they split and Jeter went on to meet and marry (in 2016) swimsuit model Hannah Davis. They are the parents of three daughters and a son.
Álex Rodríguez—The former shortstop/third baseman/Biogenesist who once counted Jeter among his besties has had verified relationships with Cameron Diaz and especially Jennifer Lopez. The latter romance almost had a big impact on baseball itself.
Rodríguez and Lopez got engaged in 2019 and pondered very publicly making a play to buy the Mets . . . before they were forced to back away. Investors weren’t thrilled about possibly pouring more money into the buy than A-Rod and J.Lo, when the couple only had $50 million to invest—and A-Rod sought to be the Boss Partner in the arrangement regardless.
A-Lo ended their engagement in due course. Lopez went on to marry her one-time fiancé, actor-producer Ben Affleck, after reconnecting in 2021. Rodríguez has dated Canadian fitness instructor Jaclyn Cordiero since 2022.
Alyssa Milano’s “Pitching Staff”—The former child star (television’s Who’s the Boss) turned actress (Charmed) and activist as an adult is both a bona fide baseball fan and now married to Hollywood agent David Bugliari. Before that, her date book was said to have included her own starting rotation: at one or another time, she dated or was rumored to have dated pitchers Carl Pavano, Brad Penny, and Barry Zito.
Milano has said since that she’s done dating baseball players—because they’re “grown men playing a little boy’s sport. That makes them childish.” What, then, is a grown woman playing pretend for a living?
Jeff Kallman is an IBWAA Life Member who writes Throneberry Fields Forever. He has written for the Society for American Baseball Research, The Hardball Times, Sports-Central, and other publications. He has lived in Las Vegas since 2007, where he plays the guitar and writes music when not writing baseball. He remains a Met fan since the day they were born.
Cleaning Up
The First 300-Game Winner
By Dan Schlossberg
With 300-game winners already an extinct species, it’s high time to salute the first one.
James Francis Galvin, variously called “Pud” (because he made opposing hitters quiver like pudding) or “The Little Steam Engine” (because he threw hard despite his 5’8” stature), won 361 games in a 14-year career that spanned 1875-1892.
Working almost every game, he twice won 46 games in a season, once won 37, and topped 600 innings pitched two years in a row.
The only 300-game winner never to pitch from the modern pitching distance of 60 feet, 6 inches, Galvin was the first pitcher with 50 shutouts but never led his league in any of the three categories in the Pitching Triple Crown: wins, strikeouts, or earned run average. He also never pitched for a first-place team.
When he wasn’t pitching, he occasionally appeared in the outfield (51 games) or even at shortstop (twice) — mainly because he was an early gate attraction who was well-liked by fans, teammates, and managers.
Never mind that he allegedly used Brown-Sequard elixir, a performance-enhancing drug, in 1889.
A mild-mannered St. Louis native, Galvin pitched two no-hitters, blending his hard fastball with a “cannonball curve” (rivals said it looked like it was shot out of a cannon), baffling changeup, and proficient pickoff move (he once picked off three runners in the same inning).
He spent most of his early years with Buffalo, then in the National League, but later played with Pittsburgh. Although earned run average was not yet an official stat, his would have figured out to 2.87 if today’s rules were applied to yesterday’s stats.
In 1884, the Little Steam Engine chugged his way into the record book by stopping two streaks: 20 wins in a row by Providence and 18 straight by Old Hoss Radbourn, who won 60 times that summer (some historians credit him with “only” 59).
One of Galvin’s biggest fans was a local lawman named Grover Cleveland, a future president whose name would be given to a future 300-game winner, Grover Cleveland Alexander. Years later, when a delegation of ballplayers visited the White House, President Cleveland asked, “How’s my friend Jimmy Galvin?”
During his last three seasons, Galvin had multiple match-ups with Tim Keefe, the second 300-game winner. Galvin won the first and one of the last three.
After their last duel, no 300-game winners met until Don Sutton dueled Phil Niekro in 1986.
Galvin’s career ended after he suffered a leg injury in a collision with Cap Anson. He also suffered from weight problems and a bad finger. He spent a year as an umpire before retiring to run a saloon in Pittsburgh.
That gave him plenty of opportunities to regale customers with tales of his baseball career — which began at a time the American flag had just 38 stars.
The father of 11, Galvin hung up his spikes one year before the introduction of the current pitching distance in 1893. In fact, pitchers were banned from throwing overhand before 1884, his sixth year in the National League.
Long overlooked by baseball historians, the first 300-game winner finally climbed the steps to Cooperstown in 1965.
Twenty-three pitchers followed Pud Galvin into the 300 Club, with Randy Johnson the most recent in 2009. All but controversial Roger Clemens are in the Hall of Fame.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ covers the game for Here’s The Pitch, forbes.com, Memories & Dreams, Sports Collectors Digest, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, and other outlets. His Hank Aaron biography comes out just before the 50th anniversary of No. 715 in April. Book Dan to speak via ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
Notable zeroes in baseball history:
0 Times Willie Mays led his league in runs batted in
0 Triple Crown winners who also led their league in stolen bases
0 MVP trophies for Ted Williams during his Triple Crown seasons
0 American League MVPs for David Ortiz during his entire career
0 Home run crowns for Stan Musial
0 Cy Young Awards for Nolan Ryan
0 No-hitters by Roger Clemens, Steve Carlton, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz combined
0 Number of times players and owners met during first 42 days of 2021 lockout
The above material was excerpted from Baseball’s Memorable Misses: an Unabashed Look at the Game’s Craziest Zeroes by Dan Schlossberg (Sports Publishing, 2023).
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.