Jackie Robinson Had Two Plaques in Baseball Hall of Fame
PLUS: MANY DIFFERENT FACTORS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR GAME CANCELLATIONS
Pregame Pepper
Did You Know . . .
Desperate to do whatever it takes to light a fire under his floundering Angels, new manager Ron Washington even resorted to batting slumping superstar Mike Trout at the top of his lineup . . .
Patrick Corbin, Tanner Rainey, and Victor Robles are the last remaining 2019 world champions still rostered by the Washington Nationals . . .
What a find: Mason Miller, the fireballing Oakland closer, is virtually certain to be the team’s 2024 All-Star if he keeps pitching so well . . .
The slow start of former MVP Aaron Judge, whose slow start resulted in a cascade of boos from Yankee fans in the Bronx, included four strikeouts in one game . . .
Fellow outfielder Aaron Hicks was even worse with the Angels, convincing the club to designate him for assignment earlier this week . . .
Wonder whether the Giants had any second thoughts after watching ex-prospect Joey Bart burst into Pittsburgh with a hot start.
Leading Off
Jackie’s Hall of Fame Plaque Had To Be Changed
By Dan Schlossberg
Watching hundreds of major-leaguers wearing No. 42 on April 15 reminded me that the man they were honoring needed to have his original Hall of Fame plaque updated.
A first-ballot selection in 1962, Jackie Robinson had a .311 lifetime batting average and played for six pennant-winners during his 10-year career. He also helped the Dodgers win their only world championship for Brooklyn, in 1955.
But his first plaque makes no mention of the fact that Robinson not only integrated the game but also endured countless challenges — namely the bigotry of ballplayers, media members, and loud-mouthed fans who reminded him at every turn that he was different than everybody else.
Thanks to a gentle nudge from his widow Rachel, the Hall of Fame took the unusual step of replacing the original Robinson plaque in June of 2008.
Its last line read, “DISPLAYED TREMENDOUS COURAGE AND POISE IN 1947 WHEN HE INTEGRATED THE MODERN MAJOR LEAGUES IN THE FACE OF INTENSE ADVERSITY.”
That corrected a huge omission in the original, which dealt strictly with baseball and not the player’s contributions to the culture of both baseball and the country.
Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn executive who brought Robinson to the majors over the objections of the other 15 clubs, once said, “I don’t think the writers chose Jackie in spite of his color or because of it. They chose him on merit.”
Maybe so but why did he only draw 77.5 per cent of the vote, barely over the 75 per cent required for enshrinement?
The original Robinson plaque found its way to the Jackie Robinson Museum in Lower Manhattan. And his reputation has risen to such a level that his vote for Cooperstown could be unanimous if it were held today.
The new plaque certainly helps his legacy.
According to Rachel Robinson, “As young people view Jack’s new Hall of Fame plaque, they will look beyond statistics and embrace all that Jack has meant and all that they can be.”
In addition to the Robinson museum, an archive of artifacts and photographs from his career opened at the Gitterman Gallery on April 15 and will run through May 24.
Called Jackie Robinson and the Color Line, the exhibit highlights the collection of Paul Reiferson and includes more than 500 prints taken by celebrated baseball photographer Charles M. Conlon.
Some have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Folk Art Museum, and Bronx Museum of the Arts, among others.
“I saw that the color line transcended baseball, that it was about America struggling to solve a terrible problem, and that the stories of the people in that fight were extraordinary,” Reiferson explained.
Included are the original photographs of Robinson and Satchel Paige published by LIFE Magazine.
Also on display are the actual telegrams between Rickey and Robinson regarding their historic first meeting.
Dan Schlossberg’s new book Home Run King: the Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron reveals that Aaron was a civil rights advocate who befriended Jackie Robinson and tried to promote his legacy. Dan’s e.mail is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Cleaning Up
Weather Isn’t The Only Reason Games Are Scrubbed
By Dan Schlossberg
Games have been delayed or postponed for rain, snow, hail, lightning, and even tornadoes but lots of other unexpected reasons also dot the baseball history books.
Just last Tuesday, for example, the first pitch of the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks was delayed by busy bees behind home plate at Chase Field in Phoenix.
Never mind this is a ballpark with a retractable dome that could have been closed to keep the annoying bees on the outside rather than the inside.
With the bees gathered on top of the betting behind home plate, the D’backs instructor fans to “please bee patient” while the organist played Let It Be, a popular song by the Bee-tles.
Amazingly, this was not the first time the D’backs had a bee delay. It happened once before, on April 3, 2014, during a game against the San Francisco Giants.
Baseball has also had a sun delay — when the setting sun made throws from third to first impossible to see at Jarry Parc — and plenty of fog delays.
When Harvey Haddix threw his 12-inning perfect game against the Milwaukee Braves at County Stadium on May 26, 1959, the fog was as thick as pea soup. And fog is no stranger to games played in the Bay Area, especially San Francisco.
And, speaking of San Francisco, how about the 1989 earthquake that stopped the World Series between the A’s and Giants for 10 full days? It struck just before Game 3, when the teams were taking warmups at Candlestick Park.
That stadium was more notorious for wind, which often played tricks with the ball, than Wrigley Field, where hitters loved when the wind blew out but pitchers celebrated when the wind blew in. Hall of Famer Greg Maddux said the changing conditions helped him as much as they hurt him.
On May 20, 1960, the Cubs and Braves were victims of the first fog-out at Milwaukee County Stadium. Umpire Frank Dascoli, having trouble seeing the outfielders from home plate, took his three crew members and headed into the outfield, where the Cubs’ three men were already stationed. Frank Thomas of the Cubs hit a fungo and one of the seven could see it. That clinched it: the game, 0-0 in the last of the fifth, was wiped out.
The only previous fog-out in NL history also involved the Cubs — at Brooklyn in 1956.
The Cubs had previously lost a game to the elements when gnats descended on Ebbets Field in the sixth inning of a doubleheader nightcap on Sept. 15, 1946. The sun was out but the gnats so irritated the fans that they waved their white scorecards to shoo them away and created a hazard for players’ vision. The Dodgers were awarded a 2-0 win since five innings had been completed.
Sudden cancellations often hurt individual players. Bill Terry of the New York Giants lost the 1931 National League batting crown by three-thousandths of a percentage point because he lost a base-hit in a game cancelled by darkness. During a doubleheader in Brooklyn, Terry singled in his first at-bat of the second game. Confident he had won the batting title after a three-way race with Jim Bottomley and Chick Hafey, Terry voluntarily left the game. But Dodgers executive Fresco Thompson set fire to several scorecards as a signal it was too dark to continue. Umpire Bill Klem forfeited the game, giving the Cards a 9-0 win in the record books, but none of the individual records counted.
Six years later, Cardinals slugger Joe Medwick lost sole possession of the NL’s home run crown because of stalling tactics by the Phillies. Medwick’s homer had helped St. Louis take a 3-0 lead in the third inning of a doubleheader nightcap but the game began late because of a heavy shower that began just as the first game ended. It would have been hard to squeeze in the required five innings before curfew curtailed the game but Phillies pilot Jimmy Wilson wanted to be sure. He began a deliberate effort to delay proceedings — despite several warnings from Bill Klem — before the ump awarded the game to the Cards by forfeit. Since five frames had not passed, Medwick lost the home run and finished in a tie with Mel Ott of the Giants (31 each).
Rowdy fans have forced forfeits too — most notably when White Sox owner Bill Veeck staged Disco Demolition Night as a promotion at Comiskey Park on July 12, 1979. A fan riot triggered by the burning of disco memorabilia made it unsafe to play the second game of a doubleheader.
Way back in 1907, unhappy fans at the opening game of the New York Giants started pelting players — and each other — with snowballs during the eighth inning of a game against the Phillies. Play had to be halted but the Phils got a 9-0 win by forfeit.
Records of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League show an Oakland game called because Army troops in training dug up the turf; a seismic shock in Seattle during a game; a midday game in Ventura, CA called off because of a total eclipse; and a 24-inning, 1-1 tie in Sacramento forced to stop when the playing field was obscured by thick black smoke from a neighbor’s burning trash.
But the all-time best reason for cancelling a game occurred in 1921, when an Appalachian League game was postponed by a homicide. After a girl’s body was found at the Kingsport, TN ballpark, police closed the stadium to avoid confusing bloodhounds in their search for the killer. The game against Knoxville was called.
Here’s The Pitch weekend editor Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ has witnessed numerous postponements, usually from severe weather. He even saw Hank Aaron lose a home run in Philadelphia when a pre-game deluge struck Connie Mack Stadium before five innings could be completed. Dan’s email, in fair weather or foul, is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia: Bronx Bombers Who Really Were
“I’ve heard worse and I’d probably be doing the same thing in their situation.”
— Yankees slugger Aaron Judge after fanning four times in a Yankee Stadium game.
Mickey Mantle fanned four times in the 1953 World Series game when Carl Erskine struck out 14 Yankees while pitching for the Brooklyn Dodgers . . .
When Mantle and Roger Maris were pursuing Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homers in a season, future Yankees broadcaster John Sterling was a disc jockey in Patchogue, Long Island . . .
Giancarlo Stanton has 362 home runs at Yankee Stadium, the most by any player in the stadium's history, and is also the only player to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at Yankee Stadium six times . . .
Mantle had 266 homers at the Bronx ballpark, followed closely by Ruth with 259, and Lou Gehrig with 254 . . .
Gehrig was the only Yankee to hit four home runs in a game and the first American Leaguer to do it.
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.
The home run stats on Stanton are way off. He has only hit 72 HRs at Yankee Stadium (he also hit one as a Marlin). https://stathead.com/tiny/hDdmW