Harold Joseph Traynor, nicknamed “Pie,” was born November 11, 1899 in Framingham, Massachusetts.
The pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates during the 1920s and ’30s, Traynor was a superior third baseman and a skillful hitter. He batted .320 during his 17-year career, hit .300 or better 10 times, and never struck out more than 28 times in a season.
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 30 of the 2010 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of July.
July 23
1930 Pirates third baseman Pie Traynor hits game-winning homers in both ends of a doubleheader. The future Hall Famer’s ninth inning home run wins the opener and he ends the nightcap when he connects in 13th.
Harold Joseph Traynor, nicknamed “Pie,” was born November 11, 1899 in Framingham, Massachusetts.
The pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates during the 1920s and ’30s, Traynor was a superior third baseman and a skillful hitter. He batted .320 during his 17-year career, hit .300 or better 10 times, and never struck out more than 28 times in a season.
As a youngster, Traynor became a fixture at neighborhood games, where he met Father John Nangle, the man who tagged him with his memorable nickname. Father Nangle was a clergyman, shopkeeper, and baseball nut who loved watching the kids’ games and give them some pointers from time to time. As Traynor told it. “The kids, in fact nearly everybody in town, used to gather at Father Nangle’s corner store in the afternoon or evening.”
When the kids would come into his store for a treat after the game, Father Nangle would ask them what they wanted. Without fail, Traynor would request a slice of pie. Father Nangle took to calling him “Pie Face,” which his buddies later shortened to “Pie.” Father Nangle would stay in touch with Traynor for years, occasionally giving him a heads-up on a promising young player back home.
Traynor signed a contract with the Pittsburg Pirates for $2,200 in August 1920 and joined the team on September 13th. Two days later, in his hometown, Traynor played in his first major league game. When shortstop Bill McKechnie hurt his leg in the seventh inning of a game against the Boston Braves, manager George Gibson summoned Traynor. He went 1-for-2 against Braves doubling home the Pirates’ lone run in the ninth inning of a 4-1 defeat. Clearly, though, Traynor needed more seasoning. He played in 17 games with the Pirates in 1920, batting just .212. His defense was even worse; he committed 12 errors at shortstop, many on wild throws.
Traynor spent most of 1921 with the Birmingham Barons, where he hit .336 and stole 47 bases. Defensively he remained a mess, committing 64 errors at shortstop. But in late August, clinging to a slim lead over the New York Giants in the standings, Pittsburgh called up the 21-year-old Traynor and thrust him right into the middle of the pennant race.
Traynor almost immediately replaced rookie Clyde Barnhart in the lineup, starting three consecutive games at third base in early September; but on September 5 his throwing error in the top of the 12th inning allowed the game-winning run to score as the Pirates lost to Cincinnati. Gibson benched Traynor for the second game of that doubleheader–and for the rest of the season. He would appear in only two more games and was a bystander as the Pirates wilted down the stretch and finished four games behind the Giants.
Traynor began spring training 1922 at second base, but he was unfamiliar with the position and played poorly. So after a couple of weeks Gibson moved him to third base. Early in the season, he played a little bit of third and a little bit of shortstop. At the end of June, with the club struggling to play .500 ball, Pittsburgh replaced Gibson with McKechnie, who planted Traynor at third base for good. That’s where he would stay for the next 13 years.
For once, Traynor’s defense was not a liability. He made strides at third base as the year went along. It was around this time that he received a hitting tip from the Cardinals’ Rogers Hornsby, who suggested to Traynor that he use a heavier bat. Traynor said the switch to a 42-ounce bat meant he was no longer just a pull hitter. “I began to hit line drives to right field and right center.” Traynor wrapped up his rookie season hitting .282–nothing special in a league where the average was .302.
Traynor established himself as an offensive force in 1923, putting together what might have been his best overall season at the plate. He hit .338 with a career high 12 home runs and 101 Runs Batted In. His 19 triples tied teammate Max Carey for tops in the major leagues, and his 28 stolen bases were also a career best.
1924 was a bit of a letdown. Traynor’s offensive numbers dropped off almost all the way across the board. McKechnie even benched him for a time in June.
The Giants set the pace in the National League early in 1925, but by June the Pirates were charging hard. From August 27th through September 23rd Pittsburgh won 22 of 30 games, including a pair of nine-game winning streaks, and took the pennant by 8 ½ games. Traynor was marvelous, batting .320 with 106 Runs Batted In, and leading third basemen in fielding percentage. His 41 double plays set a National League record for third basemen that stood for 25 years.
Just 25 years old, Traynor already was starting to receive acclaim as one of the all-time greats. In September, McGraw called him “one of the best third baseman I have ever seen.”
In the Game One World Series match-up against defending champion Washington, Traynor homered off Walter Johnson but the Senators still won 4-1. Down three games to one, the Bucs rallied to force a classic Game Seven. In the rain and muck of Forbes Field, the Senators touched Vic Aldridge for four runs in the first inning. But Pittsburgh chipped away; in the seventh inning, Traynor rocketed a Run Batted In triple deep into the fog to tie the game 6-6. He was tagged out trying to stretch it into a home run. Then with the score tied 7-7 in the bottom of the eighth, Kiki Cuyler lashed a bases-loaded two-run double off a worn out Johnson to give the Pirates their second World Series championship. In the Series Traynor batted .346.
Almost everyone from the Pirates’ championship club returned in 1926; plus, they added the great Paul Waner to the outfield mix. But internal dissention ripped the team apart. Pirate vice-president Fred Clarke was a major problem. Dreyfuss let Clarke sit in full uniform on the bench, where he forced his advice on McKechnie and delivered withering critiques of the men on the field. Some of the players couldn’t stand him. In August four players called a meeting to try to get the players to vote to remove Clarke from the dugout. Dreyfuss got wind of the so-called player revolt, immediately released two of the players, and sold another one to Brooklyn.
The Pirates had a two-game lead at the time, but they ended up in third place, five games out. Traynor, who was appointed team captain after the incident felt the controversy drained the team. “We lost our spirit. We had no zip. We slopped around and finished third when we had the best team in the league. The players started to slump off. You never saw a great club melt away so fast.” Dreyfuss fired McKechnie at the end of the season and replaced him with Donie Bush.
The 1927 Pirates added little Lloyd Waner to the lineup. Traynor took one look at the 132-pound Waner and deemed him “too small, too thin, and too scrawny.” But his .355 batting average helped propel the Pirates to another National League pennant.
Traynor batted .342, drove in 106 runs. He and Paul Waner shared a bat during the 1927 season; it was one they salvaged that spring from a former major leaguer playing for San Francisco of the Pacific Coast League. It lasted them the entire season and then some. “We had taped it and nailed it together as long as we could,” said Traynor. “I guess Paul and I must have made more than 600 hits with it
In the World Series, Pittsburgh was merely fresh meat for the 1927 Yankees, perhaps the greatest team ever. “We had just gone through as tough a pennant race as you could image…and we were worn to a bone,” recalled Traynor. He claimed that he was down to 150 pounds (from his normal playing weight of 170). Traynor later remarked, “We were whipped before we took the field.” The Yankees ripped through the Pirates in four straight. Traynor was a non-factor in the series, going 3-for-15 with one extra-base hit.
The Pirates won 85 games in 1928, but fell to fourth place in the National League. Despite hitting only three home runs, Traynor piled up a career-best 124 Runs Batted In.
In 1929 Traynor posted a batting average mark of .356, striking out just seven times in 540 at bats. Traynor had to cope with that sore back all season; he missed 23 games and his defense slipped a little, but he was still good enough to be named baseball’s best third baseman by the baseball writers and The Sporting News.
A nasty eye infection had Traynor on the sidelines for several weeks during the spring of 1930. It was so bad that he could hardly see out of his left eye. Thinking that the infection stemmed from an infection in his teeth, doctors resorted to pulling two teeth in hopes of clearing the bacteria from his system; even after his vision returned to full strength, Traynor still had to wear smoked glasses to protect his eye from the sunlight. He didn’t return to the lineup full time until late May, but he compiled the highest batting average of his career with a .366 mark. His most memorable day came in Philadelphia on July 23, when he hit a ninth inning home run to win the first game of a doubleheader and then, for an encore, walloped a 3-run homer in the 13th inning to win the nightcap.
The Pirates struggled to a fifth place finish in 1931 and Traynor was a big reason why. His defense was well below its usual standard, due in large part to a sore throwing arm that he nursed all season. It was an ordeal at the plate for him, too; for the first time in seven seasons, Traynor fell short of the .300 mark, at .298. Nonetheless, he drove in over 100 runs for the fifth straight year.
Traynor and the Pirates both enjoyed nice recoveries in 1932. Traynor boosted his average back up to .329 and tightened up his defense. Against the Boston Braves on August 30, he recorded his 2,000th career hit. The Pirates entered August leading the National League by 5 ½ games, but a 10-20 record that month doomed them to second place behind Chicago.
In 1933, the Pirates again came home in second place. Traynor hit .304 and was named to his seventh and final Sporting News all-star team. On July 6, he appeared as a pinch-hitter in the inaugural major league All-Star Game at Comiskey Park, doubling off Lefty Grove in the seventh inning.
The Pirates started strong in 1934. On May 24, they moved into first place, thanks in part to a re-invigorated Traynor, who was batting .469. However, Traynor had played in only 13 games by this point thanks to a shoulder that sometimes hurt so much that he could hardly sleep.
By June, though, the Pirates were in a tailspin and the fans, frustrated by the near misses of ’1932 and 1933, had turned on Manager George Gibson. On June 19th Traynor replaced George Gibson as Pirate manager.
Traynor promised a more aggressive style of baseball. He did give the team a short-term boost. The Bucs won 10 of their first 16 games under Traynor. During one of those games in Philadelphia he suffered an injury from which he would never fully recover. Traynor overslid the plate on a close play at home, and as he reached back to touch it, the catcher fell on his arm. He said, “I felt something snap and was certain I had a broken arm. I didn’t, but I couldn’t throw well anymore.”
Just when it appeared Pittsburgh was crawling back into the race, they lost nine straight in July and freefell out of contention, eventually finishing in fifth place. Traynor ended the year with a .309 batting average, down from the .336 when he assumed managerial duties.
Through it all, Traynor appeared to be teetering on the edge of nervous breakdown. As it turned out, Traynor was, in many ways, psychologically unsuited for the role of major league manager. By August he had lost 10 pounds in two months, appeared remarkably gaunt, and had all but stopped sleeping. A desperate Traynor said. “I can’t help it. I go to bed at night and can’t get to sleep. Often I awaken more tired than when I crawled between the sheets. I’m of a nervous temperament at all times and piloting a team which isn’t going anywhere has taken its toll.” When the season was over he admitted, “I often wished I was just a player again with no other worries.”
Traynor played in 57 games in 1935, but the Pirates likely would haven been better off if he hadn’t. He batted around .230 for much of the year. A late surge got him up to .279, but that was still the lowest mark of his career for a full season. Worse, his arm was completely gone. He committed 18 errors in just 49 games at third base. By July the pitching staff had imploded, the fans were booing, and Traynor’s weight was plummeting. The Bucs got hot in late August, winning ten straight and moving to within six games of first; but ultimately they finished in fourth place.
Traynor’s playing days quietly melted away. He decided not to take the field at all in 1936, although he kept himself on the active roster. In July 1937, injuries forced Traynor back into the lineup for just a few games.
As he prepared to sign his contract for 1938, he specified that it was to be a managerial contract only. With no fanfare, Traynor, the player, was done. His career totals over 17 seasons included 2,416 hits and a batting average of .320.
After fourth and third place finishes in 1936 and 1937, Traynor was feeling the pressure even more than usual. Pittsburgh fans were tired of teams that were good, but not good enough, and Traynor supposedly admitted to friends he thought he needed to win a pennant in 1938 to keep his job. The Pirates, as they had the year before, got off to a fast start; they won their first seven games. By late May, though, they had slipped below .500 and a frazzled Traynor, who had been ejected from only two games in the previous 16 years, got thrown out twice in a span of four days. But the Pirates caught fire in June and July, going 40-14 over those months, including a 13-game winning streak. They entered September with a comfortable seven game lead over the Chicago Cubs.
The Pirates’ lead was down to 1½ games going into a late September series in Wrigley Field. The Cubs won the first game of the series 2-1 to close within a half-game. Then the next day, with darkness approaching, Gabby Hartnett smacked a Mace Brown pitch over the wall in the bottom of the ninth to give the Cubs a 6-5 victory. Although Pittsburgh still had five games remaining, that blow by Hartnett shattered their spirit. The Cubs won the next day 10-1 and officially clinched the pennant October 1.
Benswanger stood by his manager after the Pirates’ implosion, saying “We don’t hold Pie to blame for losing the pennant.” Reportedly, the Pirates even raised Traynor’s salary from $16,500 to $18,000. The Bucs hung around the periphery of the pennant race for a while, but a 12-game losing streak in August doomed the Pirates to their worst finish in 22 years. On September 28th Traynor went to Benswanger, tendered his resignation, and accepted a job within the organization as a scout.
In 1945 Traynor embarked on his second career—broadcasting. He had a 15-minute sports broadcast every weeknight at 6:30 and a 30-minute show on Saturday morning in the spring and summer called “The Pie Traynor Club,” during which he talked baseball with local kids. He remained on the air for the next 21 years.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1948
Pie Traynor died on March 16, 1972 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by James Forr. It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: A
Automatic out
1. A batter who most likely will make an out at the plate or be retired.
2. An out made by such a batter.
There are many who believe that such an out is a great pitching feat which is anything but automatic and do not like the term.
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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
