Author: Bill Grimes

I'm from Chicago. I worked in broadcast journalism for much of the 1970's and 80's. In 1990 I became a litigation consultant, retiring in 2017. Around 2005 I recall flipping through the sports section of the newspaper coming across "On this day in baseball history Willie Mays hit his 600th home run." I enjoyed the one-liners, but I wanted more. I wanted a story. I took my news reporting skills and started researching and telling baseball stories, one for every day of the year. TodayinBaseball.com is the result.

MAY 27 – Size matters

*1960 | NEW YORK, NEW YORK –  It’s been said, ‘catching a knuckle-ball is like trying to catch a butterfly with a fly swatter.’  It’s one of the biggest challenges a catcher faces. The Baltimore Orioles tried to do something about it on this date in 1960.

One of their starters was premier knuckler Hoyt Wilhelm. Oriole catchers had an especially difficult time catching him. The Orioles set a record in 1959 for the most passed ball with 49, 38 while Wilhelm was on the mound.

On this date in 1960, Baltimore manager Paul Richards. had an idea. He came up with an oversized catcher’s mitt for catcher Clint Courtney.

It worked. Courtney had no passed balls on this date – there had been 11 in Wilhelm’s previous 28 innings – and Wilhelm pitched his first complete game of the season beating the New York Yankees 3-2.

The oversized mitt led to a rule change a few years later. Beginning with the 1965 season catcher’s mitts were limited to 38 inches in circumference and 15 ½ inches from top to bottom.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated, David Nemec,  2006
The knuckle-ball

MAY 26 – The greatest pitching performance

*1959 | MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN – What a shame! Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates took a perfect game against the Milwaukee Braves into the 13th inning on this date in 1959 – no runs, no hits, no walks, no hit-by-pitch, no nothin’.

Up until the 13th, Haddix retired every single batter, but before the inning was over he would lose the game, the perfect game and the no-hitter, 1-0.

Talk about records that may never be broken, Haddix pitched a perfect game for 12 innings! No one had ever done more than 9.

The Pirates had 12 hits that night, including one by Haddix himself, but they couldn’t muster a single run for the guy on the mound.

Haddix lost the perfect game when his 3rd baseman Don Hoak committed an error. He lost the no-hitter when Braves’ first baseman Joe Adcock doubled. He lost the game when Felix Mantilla scored from second on Adcock’s double, and the run wasn’t even earned. The game went 13 innings, but only took 2 hours and 54 minutes. Of course, there wasn’t much scoring and no pitching changes.

Did you know that the Pirates had 12 hits that night, including one by Haddix himself, but they couldn’t muster a single run for the guy on the mound?

There was another interesting thing that happened that night, Braves slugger Eddie Matthews laid down a sacrifice bunt in the 13th inning to get Mantilla to second. When’s the last time you saw a slugger (he hit over 500 home runs) lay down a sacrifice bunt – successfully at that!

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
May 26, 1959 Box score
The Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 27, 1959

MAY 25 – 9 home runs in a week

cropped-nigiht-game-5.jpg*2002 | PHOENIX, ARIZONA – The Los Angles Dodgers‘ Shawn Green hit his 8th and 9th home run in a week on this date in 2002 – at the time, a new National League record.

Green hit 4 home runs two days earlier (May 23rd).

Two days before that he hit a pair of home runs.

He hit one on May 24th.

The two he hit against the Arizona Diamondbacks on this date added up to nine for the week.

Shawn Green was born in Des Plaines, Illinois on November 10, 1972. His family later moved to California where he attended Tustin High School in Tustin, California. He received a scholarship to Stanford University in 1991, but was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays the same year.

He broke into the major leagues with Toronto in 1993 at age 20. At the end of the 2007 season Green had 328 career home runs.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
May 25, 2002 box score/stats
The Associated Press, Phoenix, AZ, May 26, 2002
Shawn Green background

MAY 24 – Let there be lights

*1935 | CINCINNATI, OHIO – The first night game took place on this date in 1935. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt flipped a switch from Washington, D.C. creating that now familiar glow emanating from night baseball. The first game under the lights took place at Crosley Field in Cincinnati where the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1 before 20,422 fans.

Night baseball is commonplace today, but it took a while to catch on. A number of charter major league teams were still without lights well into the 1940’s (well into the 1980’s for the Cubs).

It’s a wonder night baseball didn’t arrive sooner because it brought out the fans. Attendance went up just about everywhere lights went up.

According to The Sporting News, September, 1940 issue, the New York Yankees led the majors in total attendance that year with a little over a million fans. That’s about 17,000 per game at Yankee Stadium which did not have lights. Cleveland had lights, and averaged 33,000 fans when it played at night, which was only during the week.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
Attendance throughout the years
Retrosheet
Night baseball

MAY 20 – One-armed outfielder

*1945 | ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI – Pete Gray may have had his best day on this date in 1945. He helped the St. Louis Browns sweep a doubleheader from the New York Yankees 10-1 and 5-2. Gray had three hits and two RBI in the opener. He scored the winning run in the second game, and hauled in three great catches in the outfield. Maybe not the stuff of legend, except Pete Gray had one arm.

He was born Peter J. Wyshner in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania in 1915. He lost his right arm in a farm accident at age six. He played two solid seasons for the Class A Memphis Chicks in 1943 and ’44. The St. Louis Browns purchased his contract and brought him up to the big leagues in 1945. Gray’s major league career was just 77 games. He hit just .218 but had a .959 fielding percentage playing mostly left or center.

If not for World War II, which was still going on when the season started, when many regular players were in the military, it’s quite certain Gray would never have stepped between the lines during a major league baseball game. Still, Peter Gray made it to “The Show,” something millions can only dream about.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCE:
One-Armed Wonder: Pete Gray, Wartime Baseball, and the American Dream, by William C. Kashatus, McFarland & Company, 2001