On August 14, 1932, the Brooklyn Dodgers recorded a 10-inning, 2-1 victory over the Giants at the Polo Grounds. This game made reliever Jack Quinn, at 49, the oldest player to win a major league game up to that time. This record would be broken in 2012 by Rockies pitcher Jamie Moyer.
Here’s a video from Fun Fact Films featuring fifteen behind-the-scenes facts about one of my favorite baseball movies, The Sandlot. I do sympathize with Tom Guiry having to hear the line, “You’re killing me, Smalls!” every day for the rest of his life. Perhaps this is what led to him bashing the windshield of a Jeep with a dumbbell?
On July 24, 1926, Lou Gehrig stole home for the second time that season. The feat was accomplished as part of a double steal, with Babe Ruth as the trailing runner. The Iron Horse would steal 102 bases during his career, with 15 of those thefts being of home plate.
Here’s a fascinating video from Business Insider that I came across featuring Victor Conte, founder and president of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO). BALCO, you might recall, was a major player in MLB’s steroid scandal of the early-2000s. In this video, Conte talks openly about his role in the distribution of performance-enhancing substances, his thoughts on how pervasive doping has become in sports, and his thoughts about who is impacted by it all. The video focuses primarily on track and field and the Olympics, but I find it fascinating to see how this all is able to happen in general, and as the video shows, how the pressures across all sports might persuade an athlete to participate in drug use that they might not otherwise consider.
Ed Summers of the Detroit Tigers pitched all eighteen innings of a 0-0 tie with the Washington Senators on July 16, 1909. This contest at Bennett Park would be the longest scoreless game in American League history.
Willie Howard Mays Jr. was born on May 6, 1931 in Westfield, Alabama. His father, Cat Mays, was a talented baseball player with the black team at the local iron plant, and his mother, Annie Satterwhite, was a talented basketball and track star in high school. Willie’s father exposed him to baseball from an early age, playing catch with him at five and allowing him to sit on the bench with his Birmingham Industrial League team at the age of ten. Besides baseball, Mays played both football and basketball in high school, excelling in both sports.
Mays’s professional baseball career began in the Negro Leagues in 1948 with the Chattanooga Choo-Choos, a Negro minor league team. Later that year, he joined the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. He signed with the New York Giants in 1950, going on to win NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1951. Over the course of his major league career, Mays made 24 All-Star teams, was named the National League MVP twice, in 1954 and 1965, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979. He was the first NL player to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season, the first player in history to reach both 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, and the second player and the first right-handed hitter to hit 600 career home runs. Mays also shined defensively, winning 12 consecutive Gold Glove Awards after their establishment in 1957.
Willie Mays died of heart failure in Palo Alto, California on June 18, 2024 at the age of 93. Rest in peace.
Steve Blass was a teammate of Roberto Clemente from 1964 through 1972. Following Clemente’s death on December 31, 1972, Blass read the eulogy below at a memorial service for Clemente held in Puerto Rico on January 4, 1973.
*
We’ve been to the wars together
We took our foes as they came,
And always you were the leader,
And ever you played the game.
Idol of cheering multitudes;
Records are yours by sheaves
Iron of frame they hailed you:
Decked you with laurel leaves.
But higher than we hold you;
We who have known you best,
Knowing the way you came through
Every human test.
Let this be a silent token
Of lasting friendships gleam,
And all that we’ve left unspoken—
Your friends on the Pirates team.
In a game against the White Sox on May 28, 1918, Boston pitcher “Bullet” Joe Bush threw a one-hitter and drove in the lone run in the Red Sox’s victory at Fenway Park. Happy Felsch was the only Chicago player to manage a hit off the Boston right-hander.
In a game against the St. Louis Browns on May 5, 1925, Detroit Tigers outfielder Ty Cobb established an American League record with 16 total bases. Cobb collected three homers, two singles, and a double to help the Tigers defeat the Browns, 14-8. The record would stand until 2012, when Rangers’ outfielder Josh Hamilton collected 18 total bases.
Dorrel Norman Elvert “Whitey” Herzog was born on November 9, 1931 in New Athens, Illinois. As a left-handed outfielder, he was originally signed by the New York Yankees, but was traded to the Washington Senators in 1956 and went on to make his major league debut with the Senators in April of that year. As a player, Herzog played for the Senators (1956-1958), the Kansas City Athletics (1958-1960), the Baltimore Orioles (1961-1962), and the Detroit Tigers (1963).
After a couple of years with the Athletics as a scout and a coach, Herzog joined the New York Mets, where he went on to become the director of player development. He left the Mets at the end of the 1972 season, thus embarking on his managerial career. Herzog served as manager for the Texas Rangers (1973), the California Angels (1974), the Kansas City Royals (1975-1979), and the St. Louis Cardinals (1980-1990). Over the course of his career as a manager, Herzog led six division winners, three pennant winners, and one World Series winner (the 1982 Cardinals) while compiling a 1,281–1,125 (.532) career record.
Herzog was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans’ Committee on December 7, 2009. Following his induction, the Cardinals retired the jersey number 24, which he wore during his managerial tenure with the club. Whitey Herzog died on Monday, April 15, 2024 at the age of 92.
Rest in peace.