Recall Moments in Baseball

Going, Going, Gone

They say that what goes up must come down. Well, not always!

Oakland was playing the Minnesota Twins, during a major-league game on May 4, 1984, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. With two out in the fourth inning, Minnesota pitcher, Frank Viola, threw a low fastball to Dave Kingman. The batter they called “King Kong” — because of his size and mighty wallops — hit what appeared to be a routine high pop-up over the infield.

Minnesota shortstop, Houston Jiminez, and third baseman, John Castino, stood behind the mound, gazing upward. Jiminez called for the ball. He waited. Then he waited some more. Both Jiminez and Castino waited for the ball. They waited and waited……three, four, five seconds.

The ball, it turned out, had disappeared through a drainage hole in the bottom layer of the Metrodome’s fabric ceiling, about 180 feet above home plate.

Umpire Jim Evans gave Kingman a ground-rule double, citing as precedent the double he had once granted when a ball lodged in a rooftop speaker in Seattle’s Kingdome.

A Tale of Two Cities

It was a day full of surprises for Joel Youngblood. After he hit a third-inning, two-run single that helped the New York Mets defeat the Chicago Cubs on August 5, 1982, he was told he had been traded to the Montreal Expos.

He had been informed in the afternoon at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Youngblood promptly went back to his hotel and made plane reservations for Philadelphia. The Expos were playing that night. Then he realized he had left his glove in the dugout at Wrigley Field. He raced back to the ball park, barely making his plane.

When he arrived in Philadelphia, the Phillies-Expos game was in the third inning. Youngblood donned his new uniform, and Montreal manager, Jim Fanning, wasted no time inserting Youngblood into the right field. Youngblood proceeded to get a single in the Expos’ 5-4 loss to the Phillies.

Youngblood tied the major-league record for most teams played within one day, previously set by Max Flack and Cliff Heathcote. Flack and Heathcote had been traded by the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs between games of a double-header on May 30, 1922.

A Royal Flush

Only three years earlier Bret Saberhagen had been pitching in high school. Now at the age of 21-years-old, he found himself in the World Series; on the mound for the Kansas City Royals against the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Royals had been behind, three games to one, but they had come back to tie the Series, forcing a seventh and final game at Kansas City on October 27, 1985.

For Saberhagen, a 6-foot, 160-pound right-hander, there had been cause for celebration the day before: His wife gave birth to their first child. He had all the incentive he needed; as inning-by-inning, he silenced the Cardinals’ bats. Meanwhile, the Royals, led by Darryl Motley, George Brett, and Steve Balboni, had started a blazing beginning with five runs in the first three innings.

Things got so frustrating for St. Louis that starting pitcher, John Tudor, smashed an electric fan in the Cardinals’ clubhouse; after he was knocked out of the box in the third inning. He suffered a cut on his left index finger. The Cardinals’ fiery-tempered Joaquin Andujar, pitching in relief, had to be dragged away from an umpire after objecting to a call during the Royals’ six-run fifth inning, and the Cardinals’ manager, Whitey Herzog, as well was ejected.

All in all, it was a bizarre game, that saw Saberhagen pitch a five-hitter as the Royals flushed the Cardinals, 11-0, for the World Championship.

The Royals became only the fifth team in World Series history to win a best-of-seven series after losing three of the first four games, and they were the first to do so after losing the first two games at home.

Marathon Game

It would prove to be a game like no other in history. It began on April 18, 1981, a cold, windy night at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The Pawtucket Red Sox were playing the Rochester Red Wings in the International League.

Rochester scored the first run in the seventh inning, and Pawtucket tied it up in the ninth. The game went into extra innings, but there was no score until Rochester got a run in the 21st inning. However, Pawtucket did the same to keep the game tied at 2-2.

It went on and on and on. The Pawtucket manager, Joe Morgan, by the thirtieth inning was sitting under the stands with some of the players’ wives and sleeping children. Morgan had been ejected out of the game in the 21st inning for disputing an umpire’s call.

Finally, around 3 A.M. the Pawtucket publicity man telephoned the International League’s Commissioner to inform him that the game was still being played. The game was about to enter the bottom of the 32nd inning. The Commissioner told the chief of the umpire crew to suspend the game if it was still tied at the end of the inning.

Deadlocked at 2-2 after 32 innings, and a total playing time of eight hours and seven minutes, the game was suspended at 4:07 A.M., to be resumed on June 22.

When the game was resumed two months later, the entire baseball world seemed to be focused on Pawtucket. More than 50 newspapers, three television networks, and numerous radio stations from as far away as Japan were on hand to witness this bizarre event.

The suspense, however, came to a swift end when Pawtucket’s Dave Koza singled home with the winning run in the 33rd inning. The marathon was finally settled after 8 hours and 25 minutes of playing time, 67 days after it had begun.

In the process, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings surpassed the previous organized baseball record of 29 innings played by Miami and St. Petersburg in the Florida State League on June 14, 1966, and they outdistanced the major-league record of 26 innings; the 1-1 tie played by the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves on May 2, 1920.

The Great Pine Tar Incident

The Yankees led the Royals 4-3 at the top of the ninth inning, July 24, 1983, at the Yankee Stadium. U.L. Washington singles. George Brett hits a fastball into the lower deck in right field. The Royals win, 5-4.

Yankee manager, Billy Martin, runs to home-plate umpire, Tim McClelland, and demands that Brett’s bat be checked for excessive pine tar. Pine tar is the substance batters apply to their bats to give them a better grip. Baseball rules say that the bat handle may not be covered more than 18 inches from the end.

Umpire McClelland measures and determines that Brett’s bat has more than 18 inches of pine tar. Suddenly, he thrusts his right arm in the air, signaling that Brett is out. The home run doesn’t count. The Yankees win, 4-3.

Less than a week later, American League President, Lee MacPhail, reverses the umpire’s decision, noting that the rules do not provide that a hitter be called out for excessive use of tar. He calls for the game to be resumed later in the season, with the Royals leading, 5-4 — if it affects the pennant race.

Twenty-one days later, the Yankees and the Royals finish the game. The game starts at the ninth inning; the Royals’ and the Yankees both strike out in the last innin; leaving the winning score, Royals 5 – Yankees 4. At last “the great pine tar incident” is over.

Wrigley Windfall

When the wind is blowing out at Wrigley Field in Chicago, anything can happen. On May 17, 1978, when the Phillies played the Cubs, the wind was definitely blowing. Four hours and three minutes after the Cubs’ Dennis Lamp fired the first pitch, Steve Ontiveros grounded out to end a 10-inning game; in which 45 runs were scored and 11 home runs were hit. It was the highest-scoring extra-inning game in history.

The Cubs, sparked by Dave Kingman’s third homer, and Bill Buckner’s first, tied the game at 22-22 in the eighth inning. Together they drove in 13 runs during the game. In the tenth inning, the Phillies’ Mike Schmidt, who had started all the scoring in the first inning with a three-run homer, hit another one to give Philadelphia a 23-22 win. His home run came off the eleventh pitcher in the game.