Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 36 of the 2008 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of August.
August 28
1971 Phillies’ pitcher Rick Wise hits two home runs, including a grand slam, en route to his 7-3 defeat of the Giants. Five weeks earlier, Wise also hit two round-trippers against Reds and no-hit the team on the same day, 4-0.
Richard Charles Wise was born September 13, 1945 in Jackson, Michigan.
He grew up in Portland, Oregon and in 1958 led his Rose City Little League team to the Little League World Series. He became one of a handful of major league players to have played in both the Little League and Major League World Series.
A star high-school athlete in Portland, Wise signed a bonus contract with Philadelphia in 1963 and had to be kept on their 1964 major league roster. He was only 18 when he debuted for the Phillies.
In 1965 the hard thrower was sent to the minors to learn how to pitch. He returned in 1966, developing into a solid starter.
In 1971 he went 17-14 with a 2.88 earned run average for a sub-.500 Phillies team.
The highlight of Wise’s Philadelphia career occurred that year on June 23. He no-hit the Cincinnati Reds at Riverfront Stadium and hit two home runs in the same game. It was one of the greatest days any pitcher has enjoyed.
Wise, Wes Ferrell, in 1931, and Earl Wilson, in1962, are the only three no-hit pitchers to hit a home run in the same game.
Five weeks later, on August 18, against the San Francisco Giants, Wise had another day when he hit two home runs. And finally, on September 18th, against the Chicago Cubs, he performed an amazing feat, by retiring 32 batters in a row; 4 shy of the record. He also knocked in the winning run in the 12th inning.
He was one of the best-hitting pitchers in the National League, with a .195 career average and 15 home runs, 6 of them coming in 1971.
In 1972, Wise became an unwitting participant in one of the most one-sided trades of the 1970s. The owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, August Busch, ordered his team to trade its star left-handed pitcher, Steve Carlton, after a contract squabble. Because all of baseball knew of the trade mandate, teams drove very hard bargains, and the Phillie’s offer of Wise was the best St. Louis could do.
Wise won 16 games for St. Louis in both 1972 and 1973 and was the winning pitcher in the 1973 All-Star Game.
However, in 1972 alone Carlton won 27 for the last-place Phillies and would go on to anchor their starting pitching staff for the next decade, ultimately winning 329 games and a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
After the 1973 campaign, Wise was shipped to Boston in the American League for outfielder Reggie Smith.
His 1974 season was ruined by an arm injury suffered during a freezing April start at Fenway, but he rebounded in 1975 to win 19 for the Red Sox, winners of the American League East. He then won his only start in the 1975 American League Championship Series against Oakland. He was the winning pitcher, in relief, in the sixth game of the World Series, won by Carlton Fisk’s dramatic walk off home run.
Wise was traded to the Cleveland Indians in spring training of 1978. With the last-place Indians, Wise lost a league-high 19 games. He then won 15 games for another poor Cleveland team in 1979.
He signed as a free agent with San Diego after the 1979 season and won ten games in two seasons before the Padres released him in April 1982.
In an 18-year career, Wise posted a 188-181 won/loss record and a 3.69 Earned Run Average.
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: E
empty base
1. A base that is not occupied by a baserunner.
2. A base that is not covered by a defensive player. Fielders fear the empty-base throw.
It was reported in theSt. Petersburg Times, April 12, 1998 that; “Cleveland Indians third baseman Travis Fryman must have felt silly when he charged a bunt. . . threw to first base-and nobody was there. The fans gasped and the press box filled with laughter.”
And now for the ninth inning…
Continuing our trip around baseball cities…
This segment comes to you compliments of listener Stan Osowiecki.
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Baseball in Hartford, Connecticut
When sports fans think of Hartford, Connecticut, they often think of the Hartford Whalers or the PGA’s Travelers’ Championship, formerly known as the Greater Hartford Open. But from the mid-1800s until 1952, the city was home to many baseball teams.
Amateur baseball in Hartford dates back to the Civil War, when the Charter Oaks, a regional club, played at the Hartford Baseball Club Grounds near Colts Park. In 1874, the Hartford Dark Blues, owned by Morgan Buckeley, joined the National Association and eventually became a charter member of the National League in 1876.
In 1875, the team finished second in the league with a 54 – 28 record, 18.5 games behind the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The team moved to Brooklyn, New York for the 1877 season and Buckeley became the first president of the National League.
Following that move, Hartford’s minor league baseball teams struggled with their identity and league affiliation for the next 75 years. The teams played in six different leagues and had even more names, including the Bluebirds, Cooperatives, Indians, Wooden Nutmegs, Senators, Laurels, Bees and Chiefs. Their identity crisis was so bad that from 1938 to 1945, the Hartford Times called the team Laurels, the Hartford Courant called them the Senators, while the team was officially incorporated as the Bees.
Until the 1921 season, the Hartford teams continued to play at the Baseball Club Grounds and Piney Ridge Park in East Windsor, Connecticut. Games were played in East Windsor due to Hartford’s local ordinance forbidding ball games on Sundays until 1914.
In 1921, Morgan Buckeley Stadium opened and was home to a number of Major Leaguers, including Jim Thorpe, Hank Greenberg and Warren Spahn. The stadium even hosted Babe Ruth for an exhibition game in 1940.
The opening of Buckeley stadium coincided with the arrival of Lou Gehrig, a young first baseman scheduled to attend Columbia University in the fall of 1921. In the spring of that year, Gehrig was approached by a New York Giants scout, who convinced Gehrig that he could remain an amateur while playing for the Hartford Senators, which had an affiliate agreement with the Giants.
With this assurance and a guarantee that he could have a tryout at the Polo Grounds in front of Giants’ skipper John McGraw, Gehrig made his professional debut on June 3 against the Pittsfield Hillies under the assumed name of “Lou Lewis”. Gehirg’s first professional hit, a triple, would come the next day in a game versus Waterbury.
Gehrig showed great promise with the Senators, prompting the Hartford Times to note that the “young first sacker is a slugger whose present work gives hope that he will add to Hartford’s pennant-winning chain.” However, Columbia’s baseball coach soon discovered that his prospect was in violation of the school’s athletic policy, Gehrig left the Hartford club immediately and was forced to endure a one-year ban from intercollegiate baseball and football at the Ivy League institution.
The Senators recovered from this setback to go on to win the Junior World Series Tune-Up Championship of the International League in 1923 by beating the Baltimore Orioles two games to none. The next few years were lean, with the team even being disbanded mid-season in 1930. But, a two year affiliation with the Brooklyn Dodgers beginning in 1931 would pay off.
In 1931, the team finished in first place with a 97 – 40 record, outpacing the second place team by 18 games. Named by Minor League Baseball as the 26th best minor league team of all time, the Senators boasted the second through sixth best pitchers in the league, all of which would find their way to the Brooklyn roster in 1932. One of these pitchers was Van Lingle Mungo, who went on to have a 14 year major league career.
In 1938, the Scranton, Pennsylvania team of the New York-Pennsylvania League moved to Hartford to become the Laurels, a farm club of the Boston Braves. With the move, the league also changed its name to the Eastern League.
Hartford’s affiliation with the Braves proved successful at the box office as nearly 1.3 million fans attended games at Buckeley Stadium between 1938 and 1952. One Hartford banker, Frank C. Sumner, used to drive out to the stadium in his purple Rolls-Royce to watch the Hartford club.
While affiliated with the Braves, the team enjoyed its best season in 1944, posting a 99 – 38 record, a .732 winning percentage, still a league record today. And despite playing during the height of World War II, when most minor leagues were shutdown due to travel restrictions and the availability of quality personnel, the team was recognized by Minor League Baseball as the 99th best minor league team of all time.
However, the team fell in the first round of the playoffs to Utica in 1944, losing in the deciding game five by one run after committing six errors which were combined with two wild pitches from star pitcher Peter Naktenis. This was particularly disappointing as Naktenis had posted an 18 – 3 record in 1944 with a 1.93 ERA and had thrown only four wild pitches.
In 1947, the team was re-named the Hartford Chiefs. From 1947 through 1952, the team qualified for the playoffs three times, losing each time in the first round. The team was not short on talent at the plate, having the Eastern League home run champion, Homer Moore, in 1948 and three different players crowned as Eastern League batting champions between 1949 and 1951.
Unfortunately, when the Braves moved to Milwaukee following the 1952 season, the Chiefs were relocated to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and re-named the Barons. Eight years later, the aging Buckeley Stadium was demolished. The site of the stadium is now a convalescent home, which is adorned with framed articles and pictures of the ballpark through its halls and a memorial plaque in front of the building.
While baseball has not been played in Hartford for nearly 65 years, it still has connections to the game today. Still active in professional baseball today is Roland Hemond, an Executive Advisor of the Chicago White Sox, who began his baseball career more than fifty years ago as a front office member of the Hartford Chiefs.
Hartford was also the collegiate home to recently retired Houston Astro Jeff Bagwell who played for the University of Hartford. And to celebrate games past, Hartford hosts a Vintage Base Ball Tournament each summer and is home to a company that sells old-style equipment for vintage ball players.
References
Baseball History. 2003. Hartford, Hartford, My Place of Birth. Online: http://baseballhistory.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_archive.html
Baseball Reference. 2008. Hartford Bees. Online: http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Hartford_Bees
Baseball Reference. 2008. Hartford Chiefs. Online: http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Hartford_Chiefs
Baseball Reference. 2008. Hartford Laurels. Online: http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Hartford_Laurels
Cavanaugh, J. 1997. Boys of Summer, Memories Lost and Found. New York Times; New York, New York. August 17, 1997.
Chicago White Sox. 2008. Chicago White Sox Executives. Online: http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/cws/teams/exe_bios/hemond_roland.html
Eastern League Baseball. 2008. Eastern League History. Online: http://www.easternleague.com
Kashatus, W. C. 2004. Lou Gehrig: A Biography. Greenwood Publishing; Westport, Connecticut.
Luchter, P. S. 2002. Minor League Baseball in Hartford, Connecticut. Online: http://www.mindspring.com/~luckyshow/baseball/woodenutmegs.htm
O’Maxfield, K. 2001. Hartford’s Neighborhoods: South End. Online: http://hartford.omaxfield.com/soend.html
Time Magazine. 1958. Hartford’s Sound and Fury. Time Magazine; New York, New York. February 03, 1958.
Weiss, B. and Wright, M. 2008. #26: 1931 Hartford Senators. Online: http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/history/top100.jsp?idx=26
Weiss, B. and Wright, M. 2008. #99: 1944 Hartford Laurels. Online: http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/history/top100.jsp?idx=99
Wikipedia. 2008. Eastern League (baseball). Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eastern_league_(baseball)
Thank you Stan, and as promised “You get the credit.”
If you would like to a part of Baseball History Podcast, submit your written contribution for the tour segment. I will only be doing the tour when one is sent in by a listener. You can do the segment on any stadium or team; past or present; Minor League, Major League, Negro League or any league outside of the US. Write about 1 page in a conversational tone, send it to me, I will record it, and you will get the credit.
You can email me at baseballhistory@gmail.com. You can leave a voice mail at: 206-888-6506. If you need more baseball, I invite you to check out Just Baseball at justbaseballpodcast.com. Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
