Harold Patrick Reiser was born on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1919, in St. Louis, Missouri. His family called him “Pete” after the character “Two Gun Pete” from the Western movies he loved as a kid.
He loved playing sandlot baseball with his father and his brothers, and quickly showed his natural talent. Tragedy and illness touched him even as a young teenager, though, when his beloved big brother Michael contracted scarlet fever and died right after signing a contract with the Yankees.
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 14 of the 2010 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 1 week of April.
April 1
1938 Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis grants free agency to dozens of minor league players in the St. Louis Cardinals growing farm system. Landis feared that the Cardinals were building a monopoly on young talent that would jeopardize the future of the game. One of those players, young Pete Reiser, was said to be “the only one that Branch Rickey really cared about.”
Harold Patrick Reiser was born on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1919, in St. Louis, Missouri. His family called him “Pete” after the character “Two Gun Pete” from the Western movies he loved as a kid. The confusion over his given name and his nickname was to come back to haunt him in the Army.
He loved playing sandlot baseball with his father and his brothers, and quickly showed his natural talent. Tragedy and illness touched him even as a young teenager, though, when his beloved big brother Michael contracted scarlet fever and died right after signing a contract with the Yankees. Young Pete disobeyed the doctor’s order to stay out of his brother’s sickroom and also caught the disease, though he made a full recovery.
Not long after that, at the age of fifteen, Pete attended a St. Louis Cardinals tryout where he displayed his spectacular talent at hitting, running, and throwing. He outplayed hundreds of older boys and was disappointed that no one seemed to notice. In what seems like an almost unbelievable episode today, the Reiser family was later visited at home by Cardinals scout Charlie Barrett, who admitted that the Cardinals had known about Pete’s talent for years and had been watching him since grade school. They didn’t want to “tip their hand” by publicly showing too much interest for fear of losing him to another team. Because Pete was far too young to sign a contract, his family let him travel with Barrett, ostensibly as a “chauffeur.” What he was really doing, of course, was driving around the South visiting the Cardinal farm clubs and practicing against the bush leaguers.
When Pete graduated from high school, the Cardinals quickly signed him to a minor-league contract. He played primarily as an infielder for the New Iberia, Louisiana and Newport, Arkansas teams for the 1937 season, but in the spring of 1938, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ruled that the Cardinals had an unfair monopoly on minor-league players and released dozens of them, including Pete, from their contracts.
St. Louis general manager Branch Rickey, the architect of this mighty network of minor-league teams, was not willing to give up his prize prospect so easily. He arranged an under-the-table deal with his Brooklyn counterpart Larry MacPhail to sign Pete and hide him in the Brooklyn minor-league system. At some future time, Pete would then be traded back to St. Louis. This mini-conspiracy was illegal and certainly would have drawn Landis’ ire, but it was successfully concealed until much later. The plan backfired anyway as Pete/s talent matured and he became far too prominent to ignore.
Pete signed with the Dodgers for $100 and played with Superior of the Class D Northern League. During that 1938 season for Superior, Pete batted .302 with 55 extra base hits in 95 games. He also began to work on his switch-hitting during that season, taking more at bats from the left side.
Rickey and MacPhail’s plan to return Pete quietly to the Cardinals began to fall apart in the 1939 season. Pete was invited to the Dodgers training camp along with several other minor leaguers. New Dodgers manager Leo Durocher, in those days also the starting shortstop, asked Pete to take over for him on a hot day. Legend has it that in his first eleven at-bats, Pete hit four singles, four home runs, and collected three walks. Durocher, never known for his discretion, promptly started praising his rookie phenom to any sportswriter who would listen. Word quickly got back to Rickey in St. Louis, and MacPhail, trying to keep his illegal agreement, ordered Durocher to send Reiser back down to the minors. Durocher, naturally hot-tempered and ignorant of the agreement, protested so strongly that he punched MacPhail and was temporarily fired.
Eventually MacPhail won out and Pete went to Class-A Elmira for the 1939 season. There he had the first of his many serious injuries and played for two weeks with a broken right arm until the pain became unbearable. He underwent surgery to remove bone chips from his right elbow and played in only 38 games that season. While recovering, he taught himself to throw left-handed.
Pete returned to Elmira for the 1940 season and was quickly promoted to Montreal, the Dodgers’ top farm team. By the end of July he was with the Dodgers. He proved to be a valuable bench player, playing shortstop, third-base, and corner outfield positions. In 58 major-league games he hit .293 with 11 doubles, four triples, and three home runs.
The next year, 1941, proved to be one of the great years of all time for baseball. It was the year of Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak and Ted Williams’ .406 batting average. It was also the year in which the Dodgers finally became one of the National League’s elite teams. It was Pete Reiser’s first full season with a big league team and he proved to be a true sparkplug.
He was widely considered the fastest man in baseball, having been timed at 9.8 seconds in the hundred yard dash with baseball cleats. Pete captured the hearts of his teammates and the Brooklyn fans as he played with fearless, reckless abandon. At the end of the season, he became the youngest player and the first rookie to lead the National League in batting average, with a .343 mark. He also led the league in runs, doubles, triples, slugging percentage, total bases, and, ominously, hit by pitch.
Although he made it through the year relatively unscathed, he was twice hit in the head by pitched balls and knocked unconscious, the first time only five days into the season, and ran into the outfield wall while catching a long drive off the bat of Enos Slaughter. Fortunately, he only required stitches, that time. The Dodgers won 100 games and their first pennant but lost the World Series to their crosstown rival Yankees in five games, and the slogan “Wait ‘Til Next Year” was born.
The 1942 season started with even more promise for Pete Reiser. Although management didn’t encourage young players to get married, Pete and his best friend and roommate Pee Wee Reese snuck away during spring training and married their sweethearts on the same day, serving as best man and maid of honor at each other’s weddings. The old objection that a marriage would distract a player certainly didn’t hold true for Pete.
By late July the Dodgers were leading the league by 10-1/2 games and Pete was batting .383, hard on the heels of a .400 season of his own. In the 13th inning of a scoreless game against St. Louis in Sportsman’s Park, Pete chased down another long ball by Enos Slaughter. He missed the center field flagpole, caught the ball, and ran into the solid concrete wall at full speed. He dropped the ball, somehow threw it in to Pee Wee Reese, and collapsed unconscious. The tough, no-nonsense Durocher started to cry when he reached Pete and saw blood trickling from his ears. Pete woke up the next morning in a St. Louis hospital with a fractured skull, a severe concussion, and a separated shoulder. Doctors urged him not to play any more that season, but after a few days, he checked himself out of the hospital and joined the Dodgers in Pittsburgh, where he collapsed again on the field after a hitting a desperate fourteenth-inning pinch hit single.
For the rest of the season Pete fought dizziness and double vision. He could barely hit and his fielding suffered. Without their sparkplug, the Dodgers faltered and lost the pennant to the Cardinals on the last day of the season. Pete’s numbers were still pretty respectable at the end of the season. He finished with a .310 batting average and led the league with 20 stolen bases.
After the season, Pete joined the Army. He endured three years of confusion about his given name and his nickname, and was frequently given discharge orders by doctors who couldn’t believe he had ever been accepted into the military with his injuries.
His discharge was blocked over and over by camp commanders who wanted the famous Reiser on their camp teams. Even on exhibition games against semipro teams, Pete couldn’t take it easy. In 1945 he went through a wooden fence and fell down a 25-foot embankment while chasing a foul ball, dislocating his right shoulder and knocking himself unconscious again. While his shoulder healed, he switched back to throwing left-handed, as he had done in the minor leagues.
When Pete returned to the Dodgers in 1946, he was clearly not the same player as before his injury. He had trouble throwing from the outfield, reinjured his shoulder, and had a series of minor sprains and strains. He still made the All-Star team, though, led the Dodgers with 11 home runs, including three inside-the-park, and led the league in steals with 34. He set a record by stealing home seven times. His season ended early with a broken leg, though, suffered on a stolen base attempt against the Cubs.
There were big changes in Brooklyn for the 1947 season. Branch Rickey was now the general manager and he signed Jackie Robinson to the team. The fences were moved in to make room for box seats. Robinson, on the way to being named the first ever Rookie of the Year, was the kind of player Pete Reiser had been, and he became the team’s new sparkplug.
In a year much like Pete’s first full season, he batted .295 and led the league in stolen bases. Those closer fences would come to haunt Pete; on June 5 he ran into the wall chasing a fly ball and fractured his skull again. He couldn’t be revived and a Catholic priest administered last rites at the ballpark. He spent several days, paralyzed, in the hospital. About a month later, when he finally returned to the team, he collided with another player in the outfield during warm-ups. A knot on the back of his head from that collision turned out to be a dangerous blood clot that could have killed him. After surgery he continued to have dizzy spells and bad headaches, but forced himself to play in the closing weeks of the season.
The Dodgers met the Yankees again in the World Series. Pete misplayed several balls in the outfield because he couldn’t see them, and injured his ankle trying to steal second in the third game. Although Pete finished the year with a .309 average and 14 steals, he would never be a full-time player again.
Foam rubber padding was added to the Ebbets Field walls for the 1948 season, but it was too late for Pete. He only played 64 games that year and asked to be traded. He played the 1949 and 1950 seasons with the Boston Braves and then a year with Branch Rickey’s final team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. He still held on to the hope that he had some good baseball left, and played for a few months into the 1952 season with the Cleveland Indians. One final separated shoulder ended his career for good in July.
Pete’s luck didn’t improve after he left baseball. He invested most of his savings in a car dealership in St. Louis, and when that failed, he did small woodworking jobs for a lumber yard. Eventually he swallowed his pride and contacted the Dodgers to see if they had any managerial positions available. He was offered the Class-D Thomasville Georgia team and gladly took it.
During the late 50s he began moving up to higher teams in the Dodgers organization; two years with Kokomo, one with Green Bay, and finally a solid winning season with Victoria in the Texas League in 1959. That got him noticed, and he joined Walter Alston’s coaching staff in Los Angeles for the 1960 season. His time there was a happy one. He mentored speedy shortstop Maury Wills and made him into the National League’s top base stealer and a Most Valuable Player award winner. He got his long awaited World Series ring wearing a Dodger uniform when the Dodgers swept the hated Yankees in 1963. Pete retired in 1965 after suffering a heart attack in spring training.
He couldn’t stay retired when his old manager Leo Durocher called, though, and he came to the Chicago Cubs, first as a scout, then a minor league manager, and finally a coach with the Cubs. He later coached for California in the 1970 and 1971 seasons and returned to Chicago in 1973. During that season he was knocked unconscious and carried off the field one last time during an on-field brawl.
Pete went back to scouting with the Cubs until he retired in 1981. He died of a respiratory illness just after he announced his retirement, on October 25, 1981.
Many baseball writers who saw Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, Willie Mays, and Pete Rose as young players have all said that Reiser, in his prime was better. Perhaps Leo Durocher said it best: “Willie Mays had everything. Pete Reiser had everything but luck.”
This biography was written and submitted by listener Marty Merritt. So Marty, “You get the credit”
The biography draws on several sources. Most helpful were the story “The Rocky Road of Pistol Pete” by W. C. Heinz, originally published in True Magazine in 1958, and the book Pete Reiser: the rough-and-tumble career of the perfect ballplayer by Sidney Jacobson, copyright 2004.
Other useful sources included baseball-reference.com for statistics and teams, and JockBio.com for a useful overview of Reiser’s life.
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: L
Lay one down
To execute a bunt; e.g., “Smith laid one down the third base line.”
The phrase was first used in New York Evening Journal, June 17, 1908
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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
Brilliant info about Harold Patrick Reiser! He won lots of baseball event. Thanks for sharing about him.