Have you heard the one about…

…Baseball’s ultimate one-trick pony?

Herb Washington played in 105 major league games.

He had zero plate appearances.

He never put on a glove in a game. Never stood in the batter’s box. Never took a called strike, fouled off a pitch or hit a ground ball. Never recorded a putout or an assist.

His Baseball-Reference page lists 33 runs scored, 31 stolen bases and a World Series championship.

Hits: zero.

Home runs: zero.

RBI: zero.

At-bats: zero.

Washington’s job description with the Oakland A’s was considerably simpler.

Run.

That was it.

And there might not have been anyone in Baseball better qualified for that particular assignment.

Washington had been a world-class sprinter at Michigan State, where he won an NCAA championship, seven Big Ten titles and repeatedly tied or broke world records in the 50- and 60-yard dash. In February 1972, he ran 50 yards indoors in 5.0 seconds. Eight days later, he covered 60 yards in 5.8, breaking a world record once held by Olympic champion and Dallas Cowboys star Bob Hayes.

There was only one problem.

Read more

Have you heard the one about…

…the fan who was in the wrong place at the wrong time--twice?

On Aug. 17, 1957, Phillies center fielder Richie Ashburn fouled a first-inning pitch into the stands at Connie Mack Stadium and hit a fan squarely in the face.

The ball broke Alice Roth’s nose.

Play stopped as medical personnel rushed to help. Roth was bleeding badly enough that attendants placed her on a stretcher to carry her from the ballpark.

With Roth on her way out, play resumed. Ashburn stepped back into the batter’s box and fouled off the next pitch.

And he hit Roth again.

There were 7,929 people at Connie Mack Stadium that Saturday afternoon.

Somehow, Ashburn hit the same fan twice on consecutive pitches, the second time as she was being carried through the stands on a stretcher.

If any hitter in Baseball was going to do something like this, Richie Ashburn was a pretty good candidate.

Ashburn wasn’t a home run hitter. In 15 major league seasons, he hit just 29 of them. He was a bat-to-ball savant, a 5-foot-10, 170-pound center fielder who sprayed line drives, beat out ground balls, worked walks and made pitchers miserable.

He won two National League batting championships, collected 2,574 hits, batted .308 for his career and eventually went to Cooperstown. He was particularly adept at staying alive with two strikes, fouling off one difficult pitch after another until the pitcher finally gave him something he could handle.

For pitchers, it was maddening.

For Alice Roth, it was hazardous.

Read more

Have you heard the one about…

…the afternoon Detroit fielded a roster full of big leaguers for a day?

It started with Ty Cobb going into the stands.

It ended with a 20-year-old college student who had never pitched a game in his life allowing 24 runs to the defending World Series champions.

In between came a player revolt, a $5,000 threat, a frantic search through Philadelphia for anybody who could reasonably impersonate a major league ballplayer and one of the strangest rosters Baseball has ever produced.

There was a locomotive-factory machinist.

A chauffeur.

An auto mechanic.

A salesman.

A former prizefighter.

A teenager playing under an assumed name who may or may not have recently been in reform school.

A couple of old ballplayers dragged out of retirement.

And, because apparently this story needed one more subplot, a replacement third baseman who would resurface seven years later in the Black Sox scandal.

For one sunny Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia, they were the Detroit Tigers.

The trouble started three days earlier.

On May 15, 1912, the Tigers were playing the New York Highlanders—the franchise we now know as the Yankees—at Hilltop Park in Manhattan.

Cobb was already one of the greatest players in Baseball.

But he was also Ty Cobb.

He played angry. He lived angry. And opposing fans knew exactly what buttons to push to potentially set him off.

One of those fans that day was Claude Lueker, a Tammany Hall clerk who had apparently made a habit of tormenting Cobb whenever Detroit came to New York.

The taunts that afternoon became vicious and deeply personal, including racial insults and comments about Cobb’s mother and sister.

Cobb eventually had enough.

He climbed over the railing, charged into the seats and attacked Lueker.

There was another problem.

Lueker had lost one hand and most of the other in an industrial accident.

People in the crowd shouted at Cobb that the man had no hands.

Cobb kept going.

American League president Ban Johnson happened to be in the ballpark.

Cobb was ejected by umpire Fred Westervelt, and—the following day—Johnson suspended him indefinitely.

Johnson’s discipline might have ended the matter.

It didn’t.

The Tigers believed Cobb had been subjected to abuse no player should have to tolerate. Even teammates who weren’t particularly close to him rallied to his defense.

On May 17, Detroit beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-3, without Cobb.

Following the game, the Tigers met at Philadelphia’s Hotel Aldine and sent Johnson an ultimatum.

Unless Cobb was reinstated, they would go on strike.

“If players cannot have protection,” their statement declared, “we must protect ourselves.”

And they meant it.

Johnson meant what he said next, too.

If Detroit failed to put a team on the field for its May 18 game against Philadelphia, Tigers owner Frank Navin would face a $5,000 fine. That was more than many major league players earned in an entire season in 1912.

So Navin gave manager Hughie Jennings a rather unusual assignment.

Find another team.

Fast.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the Tigers were in Philadelphia.

Athletics owner-manager Connie Mack wanted the game played, too. A Saturday afternoon against Detroit meant a good gate, and Mack had no desire to refund a ballpark full of customers because somebody else’s players had gone on strike.

Mack suggested local players might be available and helped connect Jennings with Philadelphia sportswriter Joe Nolan.

Nolan knew the baseball scene.

And Nolan knew Allan Travers.

Travers was a 20-year-old junior at St. Joseph’s College.

Calling him a college baseball player would be generous.

He wasn’t on the varsity.

He was an assistant student manager who kept statistics and wrote summaries of games.

But Nolan asked Travers to find some players.

Years later, Travers remembered the instructions rather simply:

Round up as many fellows as you can find.

So he went to the corner of 23rd and Columbia in North Philadelphia.

There were guys standing around.

Travers asked if they wanted to play for the Detroit Tigers.

This is not generally how major league scouting works.

By game time, Jennings had cobbled together something resembling a roster.

Jim McGarr, 23, worked as a machinist in a locomotive factory.

Dan McGarvey was a chauffeur.

Bill Leinhauser was an 18-year-old auto machinist.

Joe Ward was a salesman and sandlot player.

Billy Maharg was a former professional boxer who stood about 5-foot-4.

Ed Irwin had bounced around the minor leagues and worked around the Phillies.

Pat Meaney had played professionally but was now 40.

Jennings also pressed two Tigers coaches back into active duty: 41-year-old Joe Sugden and 48-year-old Deacon McGuire, whose major league career had begun in the 1880s.

Then there was John Joseph Coffey.

Or Jack Smith.

Take your pick.

The 18-year-old entered the game under the name Smith, possibly because Coffey had recently encountered a few difficulties with the law.

Research later uncovered records showing that a John Joseph Coffey matching the replacement player’s identity had been sentenced to three years at the Pennsylvania Industrial Reformatory for larceny just two months earlier.

Whether he had been paroled, released or simply wasn’t where authorities expected him to be is one of the many mysteries surrounding the afternoon.

Two months later, Coffey allegedly got in trouble again for selling newspapers by falsely shouting that Theodore Roosevelt had been assassinated.

These were your Detroit Tigers.

The real Tigers showed up at Shibe Park, too.

So did more than 15,000 fans.

Cobb and his teammates initially went onto the field. But when umpire Ed “Bull” Perrine ordered Cobb off, the others followed him back to the clubhouse.

They removed their uniforms.

Then they bought tickets and went into the stands.

The strike was on.

Jennings summoned his replacement players, who put on the uniforms the real Tigers had just removed.

Some accounts say the pickup players earned $10. Some report $25. Others say more.

While there is disagreement over almost every financial detail of the afternoon, Travers remembered one detail quite clearly.

Pitching paid extra.

So the young man who wasn’t good enough to play for his college team volunteered to face the two-time defending World Series champions.

Connie Mack had initially suggested he might use some of his reserves against Detroit’s collection of strangers.

Then he filled out the lineup card.

Home Run Baker.

Eddie Collins.

Jack Barry.

Stuffy McInnis.

Most of the famous “$100,000 Infield.”

So much for mercy.

Jack Coombs, who had won 31 games for Philadelphia two years earlier and three games in the 1910 World Series, started on the mound.

Travers, the St. Joe’s assistant student manager and team statistician, took the ball for Detroit.

He had never pitched in an organized baseball game.

Not in college.

Not anywhere.

Not ever.

Years later, he remembered Jennings giving him one important piece of pitching advice:

Don’t throw hard.

Jennings was apparently afraid Travers might get killed by a line drive.

So Travers threw slow curves.

And for a little while, things weren’t completely disastrous.

Philadelphia scored three runs in the first inning but none in the second.

Another three came across in the third.

At 6-0, several thousand spectators reportedly went to the box office demanding their money back.

They had paid to see Cobb and Crawford and the Detroit Tigers.

They were watching Allan Travers and some guys from North Philadelphia.

No refunds.

Rain checks were offered.

Many returned to their seats.

They might as well see how bad this would get.

It got pretty bad.

Detroit managed to score twice in the fifth after the replacement shortstop reached base and a Philadelphia throwing error helped produce the only Tigers rally of the day.

Then the Athletics stopped fooling around.

Eight runs in the fifth.

Four in the sixth.

Four in the seventh.

Two in the eighth.

Philadelphia stole 10 bases.

Eddie Collins had five hits, scored four runs and stole five bases.

The A’s finished with 26 hits.

Detroit committed seven errors.

And Travers?

He kept pitching.

There was nobody else.

He completed all eight innings Detroit needed as the visiting team in a resounding 24-2 loss.

For Travers:

Twenty-four runs allowed.

Fourteen of them earned.

Twenty-six hits.

Seven walks.

One strikeout.

A complete game.

A 15.75 ERA.

And a permanent place in Baseball history.

He exited the game for a pinch hitter in the ninth inning. That pinch hitter? Tigers manager Hughie Jennings.

Jennings would be elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945, but he was 43 and hadn’t played regularly in the majors in a decade.

Fittingly, considering how the rest of the day had gone, he struck out.

Travers later insisted the pitching wasn’t really the problem.

He said the Athletics struggled initially with his slow stuff until they began bunting.

Then, when they did hit the ball in the air, nobody could catch it.

One of the few replacement players who could was Ward, who made a spectacular grab in right-center.

Accounts suggest nobody was more surprised than Ward himself.

Irwin provided Detroit’s only legitimate offensive fireworks, collecting two triples after replacing Maharg at third base.

Maharg’s departure produced yet another chapter in the story.

Depending on the account, he was struck in the mouth by a hard-hit ball and lost teeth trying to play third.

His one official at-bat produced an out.

That could have been the end of Billy Maharg’s place in Baseball history, but it wasn’t.

Maharg had gotten into the Tigers lineup through Detroit pitcher “Sleepy” Bill Burns, who knew him from Philadelphia.

Remember those two names.

Burns.

Maharg.

Seven years later, they would turn up together again.

This time the stakes were considerably higher.

Burns became one of the middlemen in the plot to fix the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds.

Maharg was there, too, involved in the scheme, betting on games with Burns based on their knowledge of the fix.

When the scandal finally exploded publicly in 1920, Maharg talked.

He told a Philadelphia newspaper what he knew about Burns, boxer Abe Attell, gambler Arnold Rothstein and the effort to bribe White Sox players.

Maharg later received immunity and testified for the prosecution at the Black Sox trial.

What could the odds have been?

One of the men summoned from Philadelphia’s baseball fringes to help settle Ty Cobb’s strike in 1912 later became a character in the most infamous gambling scandal in Baseball history.

And Maharg wasn’t even the strangest life to emerge from the replacement Tigers.

Irwin, who tripled twice, died four years later after being thrown through the window of a Philadelphia saloon and suffering a severed jugular vein.

Leinhauser became a Philadelphia policeman and eventually a lieutenant in the narcotics bureau.

Years later, he helped researchers piece together the identities of the men with whom he had filled in for the Tigers that afternoon.

He also remembered one detail with particular pride.

The Detroit uniform he wore that day had belonged to Ty Cobb.

McGarr became a firefighter, served in World War I, survived shrapnel wounds and shell shock and later moved to Florida. He lived until 1981--the last known survivor of the makeshift Tigers.

Meaney had once been a promising left-handed pitcher before his arm went bad.

So he taught himself to throw right-handed.

He kept playing.

Deacon McGuire’s emergency appearance extended a major league career that had begun 28 years earlier and included 26 seasons behind the plate.

And Allan Travers?

He went back to school.

He graduated from St. Joseph’s in 1913 and entered the Society of Jesus.

In 1926, he was ordained a Catholic priest.

Father Aloysius Travers spent much of the rest of his life teaching Spanish and religion.

He rarely talked about the afternoon he pitched for the Detroit Tigers.

Students who discovered the story occasionally tried to get him to discuss it.

He generally refused.

But his one afternoon in a major league uniform left him with a distinction no one else has ever matched.

Father Travers remains the only Catholic priest ever to play Major League Baseball.

As for the real Tigers, sitting in the grandstand watching their replacements get demolished?

They apparently had a wonderful time.

Detroit shortstop Donie Bush called the spectacle a circus.

Jim Delahanty, one of the leaders of the walkout, said he wouldn’t have missed it.

Ban Johnson, the A.L. president, was considerably less amused.

He arrived in Philadelphia and made it clear the strike was finished.

If the Tigers continued refusing to play, he threatened to ban them from Organized Baseball.

Cobb eventually urged his teammates to return.

He didn’t want them losing their livelihoods over him.

The Tigers relented.

Johnson fined 18 Detroit players $100 apiece.

Cobb eventually received a $50 fine, and his suspension was lifted after 10 days.

More significantly, Johnson promised stronger protection for players subjected to abuse from spectators.

The uprising had lasted one game.

The replacement Tigers disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared.

Most never played another inning in the major leagues.

Their statistics remained frozen forever.

One game.

A couple of hits.

An error.

An at-bat.

Twenty-four runs allowed.

For a few hours on May 18, 1912, Baseball opened one of those strange little side doors through which ordinary people occasionally wander into its permanent record.

A machinist became a major leaguer.

A chauffeur became a major leaguer.

A salesman became a major leaguer.

A kid with an alias became a major leaguer.

A future Black Sox conspirator became a major leaguer.

And a college student standing on a Philadelphia street corner wound up pitching eight innings against Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker and the defending champions.

The Philadelphia Athletics won, 24-2.

But well over a century later, nobody remembers the game because the Athletics won.

They remember the day the Detroit Tigers refused to play…

…and Detroit found some other Tigers.

While You’re Here…

• Your feedback is always appreciated. Hit the “LIKE” button below if you enjoyed this post and please leave a comment.

• Have a topic you’d like to see me write about in future editions of Extra Innings? Tweet me @GlennGeffner and use hashtag #ExtraInnings.

• Learn more about one-on-one play-by-play coaching from Glenn Geffner via Zoom at GlennGeffner.com.

If you enjoy Baseball stories like this one, you’ve come to the right place.

Extra Innings explores strange, fascinating and often forgotten occurrences from Baseball’s past--stories that live beyond the boxscore. With a subscription, new stories will be delivered directly to your email three times each week.

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Have you heard the one about…

…the ballplayer who got two hits for two teams in two cities in a single day?

Tony Gwynn played 20 Major League seasons. Every one with the San Diego Padres.

Cal Ripken Jr. played 21. Every one with the Baltimore Orioles.

George Brett played 21 with the Kansas City Royals. Alan Trammell played 20 with the Detroit Tigers.

Carl Yastrzemski and Brooks Robinson each played 23 seasons without changing teams.

On August 4, 1982, Joel Youngblood wore two uniforms before bedtime.

On that day, he woke up in a Chicago hotel room as a member of the New York Mets.

That afternoon, he got a hit for them at Wrigley Field.

Then, in the middle of the game, he got traded.

So he packed his bags, raced to the airport, flew to Philadelphia, put on a Montreal Expos uniform and got another hit that night.

For good measure, the two pitchers he got those hits against were future Hall of Famers Ferguson Jenkins and Steve Carlton.

Two Hall of Famers.

Two teams.

Two cities.

Two hits.

One day.

Baseball has been around for a long time.

Nobody else has ever done it.

Joel Youngblood was no obscure September call-up who happened to stumble into Baseball history.

He played 14 Major League seasons. He came up with Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine in 1976, eventually played for five teams and finished with 969 hits.

And the year before his whirlwind tour of the National League, Youngblood had been an All-Star.

The 1981 season had been interrupted by a players strike, but Youngblood was hitting .359 when play stopped in June. He finished the year at .350, easily the best average of his career, and represented the Mets in the All-Star Game.

By 1982, however, things had changed.

Read more

Have you heard the one about…

…the potato that cost a minor league catcher his job?

The Brewers and Braves played a memorable MLB Little League Classic at historic Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Sunday night. But there was virtually nothing either team could have done to produce the most memorable moment in the ballpark’s 100-year history.

That happened nearly 39 years earlier.

It involved a backup catcher, a runner at third and a potato.

Dave Bresnahan played four seasons in the minor leagues and never made it to the majors. As a 25-year-old in 1987, playing for the Double-A Williamsport Bills, he hit .150 with 22 hits in 147 at-bats and exactly zero home runs.

Yet his uniform number was retired not long after he himself was involuntarily retired.

Bresnahan was born into something approaching Baseball royalty. His great-uncle was Roger Bresnahan, the Hall of Fame catcher who starred for John McGraw’s New York Giants in the early 1900s and is credited with helping introduce protective shin guards.

But while Roger Bresnahan’s Baseball journey led him to Cooperstown, the best Dave Bresnahan could do was the produce section at Weis Market.

Baseball being Baseball, both men became immortal.

Read more

Have you heard the one about…

…how Baseball found its perfect dimensions?

Sixty feet, 6 inches.

Ninety feet.

Seventeen inches.

Ten inches.

They are numbers every serious Baseball fan knows.

The pitcher’s rubber is 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. The bases are 90 feet apart. Home plate is 17 inches wide. The pitcher’s mound is 10 inches high.

We know the numbers.

But why those numbers?

Why isn’t the pitcher 60 feet from home plate? Or 61?

Why are the bases 90 feet apart instead of 85? Or 100?

Why is home plate the only five-sided base on a field everybody calls a diamond?

And why are the foul lines and foul poles actually in fair territory?

Baseball’s playing field seems so familiar, so perfectly proportioned, that it’s easy to assume someone sat down nearly two centuries ago with a ruler, a compass and a blank sheet of paper and designed the whole thing.

But that isn’t remotely what happened.

The Baseball diamond was built one problem at a time.

And perhaps the best place to start is with its strangest measurement.

Sixty feet, 6 inches

There is a wonderful story explaining those mysterious six inches.

According to the legend, when Baseball decided to move pitchers farther from home plate in 1893, the intended distance was an even 60 feet.

Someone supposedly wrote the measurement as 60’0”.

Someone else supposedly misread it as 60’6”.

And a clerical mistake led to one of Baseball’s most sacred dimensions.

It is a fantastic story.

It also almost certainly isn’t true.

Read more

Have you heard the one about…

…the music legend who got his start in the Negro Leagues?

Earlier this month, I was walking outside Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium when I came across a statue of a former baseball player.

The Ryman is known as the Mother Church of Country Music, one of the most iconic music venues in the world. Outside, its Icon Walk features life-size bronze statues honoring five people whose music helped make the place legendary.

Loretta Lynn is there.

Bill Monroe.

Little Jimmy Dickens.

George Jones.

And standing among them is a man who once made his living playing baseball.

His name was Charley Pride.

And long before he sold tens of millions of records, won Grammy Awards, and became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Pride had another ambition.

He wanted to become the greatest baseball player who ever lived.

Read more

Have you heard the one about…

…Major League Baseball’s ultimate quick-change artists?

EDITOR’S NOTE: With the Brewers and Mariners matching up in Milwaukee this week, here’s a look back at one of my most widely read Extra Innings posts from earlier in the season.

With the Brewers leading the National League Central and the Mariners in the mix for a post-season spot in the jumbled American League, fans in Milwaukee and Seattle—what I have long considered the two most under-appreciated great Baseball cities in America—are hopeful this could be their year.

Brewers fans would love to see their team reach the World Series for just the second time ever after a gut-wrenching seven-game series loss to the Cardinals in 1982. The Brewers join the Padres, Rockies and Rays as one of only four current franchises to have reached the World Series but to have never won one.

Meanwhile, the Mariners--born in 1977 and playing their 50th season--are the only current big league club that has never even appeared in a World Series.

But as-yet-unfulfilled championship dreams aren’t the only thing that bonds baseball in Wisconsin and the Pacific Northwest.

Before there were the Milwaukee Brewers, there were the Milwaukee Braves.

The Braves arrived in Milwaukee in 1953 after owner Lou Perini moved the franchise from Boston, citing declining attendance.

The move was Major League Baseball’s first franchise relocation in 50 years, and Milwaukee passionately embraced the team.

Playing at brand-new Milwaukee County Stadium, the Braves led the National League in attendance during each of their first five seasons, proving that Major League Baseball could thrive outside its traditional eastern strongholds.

Those Milwaukee clubs were loaded with stars. After beginning his career in the Negro Leagues, outfielder Henry Aaron blossomed into one of the greatest players in Baseball history. Third baseman Eddie Mathews joined him to form one of the game’s most feared power combinations, while Warren Spahn—the winningest lefthander in Baseball history—anchored the rotation, recording 363 victories during his Hall of Fame career. Catcher Del Crandall, first baseman Joe Adcock and pitcher Lew Burdette were also part of one of the National League’s most talented rosters.

The Braves reached back-to-back World Series in 1957 and 1958. Their greatest triumph came in 1957, when Aaron won the National League MVP Award and Burdette stunned the mighty New York Yankees by throwing three complete-game victories in the World Series, giving Milwaukee its only Major League championship. The following year, the Braves returned to the Fall Classic, but the Yankees exacted revenge, winning the rematch in seven.

The romance, however, proved shorter-lasting than anyone expected. Although the Braves never had a losing season during their 13 years in Milwaukee--winning one World Series, two National League pennants and averaging nearly 88 victories per year--attendance declined in the early 1960s as the club slipped from championship contention.

New ownership believed the rapidly growing city of Atlanta offered greater long-term opportunity, especially after local officials built Atlanta Stadium in hopes of attracting a Major League franchise. Following legal challenges that delayed the move for one season, the club left Milwaukee after the 1965 season and became the Atlanta Braves in 1966, bringing Major League Baseball to the Deep South for the first time.

Many may not remember that Seattle had Major League Baseball before the Mariners.

The city’s first taste of the big leagues lasted just one season, but the story remains one of the sport’s most fascinating cautionary tales.

It also inspired one of baseball’s most wonderfully absurd songs.

The Seattle Pilots were born in 1969 as an American League expansion franchise, arriving alongside the Kansas City Royals. Led by owner Dewey Soriano and general manager Marvin Milkes, the Pilots played their lone season at Sick’s Stadium, a former minor league ballpark that was hastily expanded to meet Major League requirements. The renovations proved inadequate. Fans dealt with obstructed views, unfinished construction, poor drainage and even reports of plumbing problems throughout the season.

On the field, the Pilots showed flashes of promise but finished 64-98, last in the newly created American League West. Don Mincher provided much of the power, slamming 25 homers. Tommy Harper sparked the offense with 73 stolen bases. And Diego Segui led the way on the mound with 12 wins and a 3.35 ERA.

The Pilots’ greatest legacy may have come not from anything they did on the field but from some of what they did off of it. Pitcher Jim Bouton’s best-selling 1970 book Ball Four chronicled the club’s inaugural season with unprecedented honesty, offering readers an unfiltered look at life in the major leagues. The book became one of the most influential baseball books ever written, forever changing the way fans viewed the game and, especially, the people who played it.

Behind the scenes, however, the franchise was unraveling almost from the day it was born. Saddled with mounting debt, stadium issues and ownership struggles, the Pilots spent the offseason searching desperately for financial stability. By the spring of 1970, the club’s future had become one of the biggest stories in Baseball.

Then the unimaginable happened.

Pilots players, coaches and front office staff reported to Spring Training in Tempe, Arizona not knowing where their team would play the upcoming season. Every day seemed to bring another rumor. Back to Seattle? Was a move to Milwaukee in the cards? Somewhere else entirely?

Perhaps nothing captures the strange saga of those surreal days better than the plight of the team’s equipment truck.

When Spring Training ended, the truck pulled away from Tempe Diablo Stadium loaded with uniforms, bats, gloves and everything else a major league club needed for Opening Day. But even as the truck rolled north through Arizona, Utah and beyond, its final destination remained TBD. Nobody could say for certain where a major league clubhouse would be waiting for it to unload.

If Seattle somehow received an 11th-hour reprieve, the truck would continue northwest. If another city acquired the franchise, it would turn northeast.

While Seattle struggled to save the Pilots, another city refused to give up on bringing Baseball back.

Milwaukee had been without the major leagues since the Braves left for Atlanta after the 1965 season. Leading the effort to return Baseball to Wisconsin was 35-year-old local automobile dealer Bud Selig, who had devoted the years since his beloved Braves had departed to searching for a franchise to bring home. After previous attempts--including an effort to lure the White Sox north from Chicago--had come up short, he and his assembled group of Milwaukee investors turned their attention to the financially crippled Pilots.

Working against a near-impossible deadline, Selig’s ownership group reached an agreement to purchase the bankrupt franchise in the waning days of the spring. A federal bankruptcy judge approved the sale just six days before Opening Day, leaving barely enough time to relocate a Major League organization nearly 2,000 miles before the season began.

The equipment truck finally had its answer. And so did Major League Baseball.

It wasn’t going to Seattle.

It was going to Milwaukee.

The transformation happened almost overnight. The Brewers, who had hoped to wear red and blue to pay tribute to their Braves heritage, had no choice but to hastily alter the existing blue and gold Seattle uniforms--changing the block letters across the chest from “Pilots” to “Brewers.” They literally tore letters off the jerseys and stitched on new ones. Batting helmets still bore the old Seattle logo during the season’s opening weeks, and some equipment continued arriving with “Pilots” markings long after the franchise had settled into its new home.

More than 55 years later, the Brewers’ signature blue-and-gold identity can still be traced back to Seattle.

Baseball has seen franchises relocate before and since. But none quite like this. In less than a week, a club changed cities, uniforms and identities while racing toward Opening Day.

In one frenzied week in March 1970, one city lost Major League Baseball.

Another got it back.

Neither city has forgotten. Milwaukee reclaimed the major leagues. Seattle got another chance with the expansion Mariners in 1977, but the story of the Pilots remains woven into the city’s Baseball identity.

More than half a century later, two cities separated by nearly 2,000 miles remain forever connected by one unforgettable week in Baseball history--and by the shared hope that this will finally be the year one of them reaches Baseball’s mountaintop.

While You’re Here…

• Your feedback is always appreciated. Hit the “LIKE” button below if you enjoyed this post and please leave a comment.

• Have a topic you’d like to see me write about in future editions of Extra Innings? Tweet me @GlennGeffner and use hashtag #ExtraInnings.

• Learn more about one-on-one play-by-play coaching from Glenn Geffner via Zoom at GlennGeffner.com.

If you enjoy Baseball stories like this one, you’ve come to the right place.

Extra Innings explores strange, fascinating and often forgotten occurrences from Baseball’s past--stories that live beyond the boxscore. With a subscription, new stories will be delivered directly to your email three times each week.

If you’d like to join our Extra Innings community, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. A monthly subscription is only $8. You can purchase an annual subscription that covers the 2026 season as well as occasional off-season posts and also gives you access to the full evergreen Extra Innings archive for only $80.

And if you enjoy our content, please share it with others who share our passion for Baseball.

Share

Have you heard the one about…

…the coach who is remembered for so much more than the dynasty he built?

When Stanley “Skip” Bertman died early Friday morning at age 88, the numbers were the first thing most people focused on.

After all, they’re hard to ignore.

Eighteen seasons as head coach at LSU from 1984-2001. A total of 870 victories. Eleven trips to the College World Series. And five national championships.

Bertman didn’t simply build a winning College Baseball team. He took over one that averaged fewer than 500 fans per game, transformed Alex Box Stadium into one of the loudest and most intimidating venues in the sport and helped grow College Baseball in Baton Rouge from a friends-and-family proposition into one of the elite brands in all of college sports.

Plain and simple, he took a program with no tradition and little previous success and created the preeminent program in the sport--both on and off the field.

“I was ‘Bertram’ for about eight years,” Bertman recalled years later, in talking about his early years at LSU. He recalled hearing it from fans behind the dugout. “Hey, Bertram, we’re one point down.”

“And I’d turn around,” he said, “and tell them, ‘They’re not points, they’re runs.’”

“And I’d hear, ‘Hey, referee, you stink.’”

His reply? “They’re not referees. They’re umpires and, yes, they do.”

As for baseball’s place on campus in his early years: “There were two sports, football and spring football.”

That soon changed thanks to Skip Bertman. But that’s only part of the story that emerged after news of his death broke early Friday.

As word of Bertman’s death spread, something better than numbers began filling social media and the airwaves.

People started telling Skip stories.

Former players told them. Opposing coaches told them. Broadcasters told them. Reporters told them.

And I understood because I have my own Skip Bertman stories from decades ago.

Long before he became synonymous with LSU Baseball, Skip was Ron Fraser’s right-hand man at the University of Miami, where I grew up watching the Hurricanes at Mark Light Field and spent my summers at Fraser’s baseball camp.

As the camp’s director, Skip hired me for the first job I ever had, first as a CIT (counselor in training) and later as a counselor when I was in high school. The man signed the first paycheck I ever received.

But that’s not what I’ll remember most.

I still have the baseball fundamentals book he wrote nearly 50 years ago. It taught me how to execute rundowns and relays and how to drop down a bunt.

That’s not what I’ll remember most either, however.

What I’ll remember most is riding around the UM campus with him in a golf cart and listening--because Skip always had something to say that was worth hearing.

I wound up working in Baseball for 31 years.

I’m now a college professor.

And I may not have achieved either without the lessons I learned and the inspiration I took from Skip Bertman.

That’s why I’ve spent a lot of time the past few days reading and listening as so many others shared their personal remembrances.

Most of the best stories had little to do with wins, championships or even baseball.

We’ll get to those.

But there is one baseball story that has to be told.

It happened at the 1982 College World Series, when Bertman was associate head coach at Miami and the Hurricanes were facing a Wichita State team that was in the midst of one of the greatest offensive seasons in College Baseball history en route to winning more games than any team ever has.

The Shockers were led by Phil Stephenson, the national player of the year who--in addition to batting .399 with 30 doubles, 23 home runs and 115 RBI--was one of the most prolific base stealers the game had seen. He had already stolen 86 bases that season.

So Skip decided Miami would use his aggressiveness against him.

With Stephenson at first base in the sixth inning--at dusk, when it could be a little difficult to see--Bertman gave the signal. He stuck a finger in his ear.

Pitcher Mike Kasprzak stepped off the rubber and appeared to make a wild pickoff throw to first base.

Except he never threw the ball.

First baseman Steve Lusby dove to his right, into the retreating runner, as if trying unsuccessfully to catch it. Then, after shouting a profanity for good measure, he took off toward the right-field bullpen. The second baseman and right fielder joined the chase. Players in the bullpen jumped out of the way. The Miami dugout pointed frantically toward right field. Even the ballgirls were in on the ruse as the ESPN camera followed the imaginary baseball.

Stephenson, who saw what everybody else saw (or thought they saw), picked himself up and broke for second.

Kasprzak calmly took the baseball out of his glove and tossed it to waiting shortstop Bill Wrona, who applied the tag on the befuddled Stephenson.

Out!

It became known as “The Grand Illusion” and “The Phantom Pickoff,” one of the most famous trick plays in College World Series history. Even better, the play continued working after Miami had used it. Opponents were so afraid they might be the next to be duped that runners shortened their leads, and when a Miami pitcher later actually threw a pickoff attempt into center field, a University of Maine runner stayed put because his coach thought that might be another trick.

That was Skip Bertman.

But there was so much more.

Years later at LSU, longtime Baton Rouge broadcaster Charles Hanagriff remembered Bertman saying he could walk into an opposing stadium, spot a hole in the netting behind home plate and immediately feel good about LSU’s chances.

Why?

Because if the other coach hadn’t noticed the hole, Skip figured he probably wasn’t noticing plenty of other things, either. Small details that might be the difference between winning and losing a close game.

“I could always beat that guy,” Bertman said.

That obsession with detail extended well beyond balls and strikes.

As he tried to build a devoted fanbase at LSU, he sent assistant coaches into the stands in the middle of games to make sure the coffee and hot chocolate at Alex Box were hot enough on those chilly early-spring nights. The sodas had to be cold when the weather warmed up. The restroom lines had to be short.

Bertman understood that if families enjoyed themselves, they would come back. Their children might grow up and bring their own children. Put enough of those families into Alex Box Stadium and suddenly LSU had something few in College Baseball had at that time--a genuine home-field advantage.

In those early years, a season ticket that allowed a family of four to attend every LSU home game cost only $50.

Skip wasn’t just coaching a baseball team.

He was building a business.

He was also building belief.

He was renowned for his pregame speeches.

One of Bertman’s most famous motivational tools was “Hold the Rope,” a lesson about trust that became so associated with him it eventually provided the title for an ESPN documentary about his life and career.

Imagine yourself hanging from a rope over the side of a cliff.

Who would you trust to hold the other end?

That was the standard. Trust wasn’t something you demanded from a teammate. It was something you had to earn from him.

And when your roster was full of players who trusted each other, well, you might reach the College World Series 11 times.

Here’s Bertman telling the Hold the Rope story in his own words.

Here’s Bertman’s memorable nickel demonstration.

Former LSU catcher Mike Bianco, now the longtime head coach at Ole Miss, remembered another example of Bertman knowing exactly which button to push.

When LSU’s players returned from Christmas break one year, Skip announced that the Tigers would begin practicing twice a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

There was one problem.

A lot of the players had already bought tickets to see a Bon Jovi concert.

On a Thursday night.

Eventually, they persuaded one of LSU’s graduate assistants to approach Bertman about possibly changing the practice schedule.

Skip was furious.

Here were players more worried about a rock concert than trying to win a national championship, he complained.

Nothing more was said.

Then, a few days before the show, Bertman gathered the team together after practice.

Thursday night’s practice was canceled, he announced.

Jon Bon Jovi was coming to town, and Skip and his wife Sandy really wanted to go to the concert.

Nobody believed that part.

But the players got to go.

And they brought their coach a souvenir.

It was a Bon Jovi tour T-shirt with the words “Back and Kicking Ass” across the back.

The players added one more thing above it:

SKIP

So now it read:

SKIP
Back and Kicking Ass

Months passed. That night of team building was long forgotten.

Then, before a critical SEC series, Bertman delivered one of his customary pregame motivational speeches.

Players noticed something unusual.

Beneath his LSU jersey, Skip was wearing a black T-shirt.

Nobody knew why.

Not until the end.

Bertman finished his speech, turned his back to the team and lifted his LSU jersey.

There it was.

SKIP

Back and Kicking Ass.

The players went crazy.

Then LSU went out and won the series.

That was Bertman’s gift.

He could be furious with his players in January, let them go to a Bon Jovi concert anyway, accept the joke at his expense--and then save the punch line until the exact moment he thought they needed it most.

Sometimes Bertman built confidence with something considerably simpler.

In 1989, LSU traveled to College Station for an NCAA Regional against No. 1 Texas A&M, a team that had lost only five games all season.

The Tigers walked into their clubhouse and Bertman began reading.

First, Texas A&M’s schedule.

Dallas Baptist. TCU. Prairie View A&M.

Then LSU’s.

Florida. Alabama. Florida State.

His point wasn’t complicated.

“You are just as good if not better than that team.”

LSU beat Texas A&M twice.

The Aggies finished 58-7.

LSU went to Omaha.

That ability to make players believe they were capable of more came through repeatedly in the stories shared after his death.

Former LSU outfielder Ray Wright remembered climbing aboard the team bus in Omaha after LSU had won a national championship.

Bertman was waiting for his players.

As Wright boarded, Skip greeted him.

“National Champion Ray Wright.”

Think about that.

LSU had just achieved the ultimate team accomplishment, and Bertman immediately personalized it.

You did this.

You are a national champion.

More than 25 years later, Wright still remembered those four words.

Justin Hill arrived at LSU as a walk-on. He remembered sitting with his father and Bertman in the first-base dugout at the old Alex Box Stadium and asking for only one thing--a chance.

Bertman gave it to him.

Hill said Skip coached him hard but never allowed his walk-on label to determine his opportunities.

His play did.

He called playing for Bertman at LSU “an Ivy League-level baseball education.”

And where did that education lead Justin Hill?

He recently finished his 13th season as head coach at McNeese State.

For a man who devoted his life to competition, Bertman understood something else.

Respect the other guy.

After Skip coached his final game at LSU, when the Tigers were eliminated from the 2001 Super Regional by Tulane one win shy of another trip to the College World Series, he remained on the field to give the Green Wave team the same kind of pre-Omaha pep talk he would have given his own team.

He had just been denied a 12th trip to the College World Series in his final game, but he took the time to honor--and even motivate--the team that moments earlier had ended his coaching career.

Then there was the baseball brain.

Baton Rouge broadcaster Charles Hanagriff tells a story about working an LSU radio broadcast alone one night when his usual partner unexpectedly couldn’t make it.

Somebody went looking for a former player to join him.

They came back with Skip, years after he’d coached his final game.

At one point during the game, Bertman predicted a strikeout.

Four seconds later, the batter struck out.

Hanagriff asked how he knew.

Skip proceeded to reconstruct the pitch sequence from the hitter’s previous at-bat.

Remember, Bertman hadn’t arrived at the stadium expecting to broadcast the game. He had been sitting down the first-base line.

He had simply watched.

And remembered.

Hanagriff came to believe Bertman possessed a photographic memory--not merely recalling what a player had done in his previous at-bat but remembering pitch sequences, defensive alignments and what had happened innings or even games earlier.

This past May, almost 30 years after Warren Morris’ iconic walk-off home run beat Miami for the 1996 national championship, Hanagriff asked Bertman about a play from the game before it.

Justin Bowles had hit a ball off the wall with the bases loaded against Florida, yet only one run scored.

Hanagriff, who had been at the game and is 34 years younger than Bertman, couldn’t remember why.

The 88-year-old Bertman did.

The ball had been hit so hard that it caromed immediately back to the outfielder, he explained, forcing LSU to hold the second runner at third.

Thirty years later.

He remembered.

Skip could also be very funny.

Former ESPN anchor Stan Verrett remembered covering LSU at an NCAA Regional in Tuscaloosa and hearing Bertman provide reporters with the team’s lodging information.

They would be staying at the La Quinta, Skip explained, “which as you may know, in Spanish, means ‘next to Denny’s.’”

That sounds like Skip, too.

So does Hanagriff’s story about inviting Bertman onto his radio show for what was supposed to be a segment or two.

Skip stayed for the entire two-hour show.

He told stories about raising money for chairback seats at Alex Box. About interviewing Bobby Petrino at a seedy motel in Memphis. And about deciding not to have Mike Fontenot bunt with the national championship-winning run on first base in 2000.

Two hours passed.

Hanagriff kept him on.

Then he kept going past the end of the show.

Ten minutes.

Twenty.

Eventually the station president called the producer and ordered him to make Hanagriff stop because the rest of the day’s programming schedule was being thrown into chaos.

Hanagriff finally signed off.

Later, the station president admitted he probably would have done the same thing.

That may be the perfect Skip Bertman story.

Because for all the winning, all the strategy and all the lessons, Skip was a storyteller.

And people wanted to listen.

They still do.

Bertman’s ability to read people extended well beyond Baseball.

Nick Saban shared a story about learning that in an interview with Baton Rouge station WAFB Friday.

Saban arrived at LSU in 2000, and Bertman was named the school’s athletic director the following year while still coaching the Baseball team. After completing his final season in the dugout, Skip moved full-time into the AD’s office. The two helped preside over one of the most transformative periods in LSU athletics history, with Saban leading the Tigers to the 2003 national championship in football.

Then the NFL came calling.

When Saban was unsure whether or not he should leave LSU for the Miami Dolphins following the 2004 season, he stood with his AD on the balcony outside Bertman’s office, and Skip asked him to consider a simple question:

Did he want his legacy to be as a college coach or an NFL coach?

“Do you want to be remembered as Bear Bryant or as Don Shula?”

In his heart, Saban knew the answer.

Bear Bryant.

He left anyway.

More than two decades later, after Bertman’s death, Saban acknowledged what his old athletic director had seen more clearly than he had.

“Skip was 100 percent right. I just didn’t listen to him.”

Saban said Bertman had an unusual understanding of “human behavior, how to motivate people, how to get the best out of people.”

Saban lasted two seasons with the Dolphins before returning to the college game at Alabama, where he won six national championships and became widely regarded as the greatest coach in College Football history.

When you add the one title at LSU to the six in Tuscaloosa, Saban’s seven national championships are a record, one more than Bear Bryant earned.

Bertman apparently saw that coming, too.

Saban also remembered Bertman’s ability to turn vision into action.

When Saban arrived at LSU, the school lacked a dedicated academic center for student-athletes. Saban wanted one and was told securing funding from the Louisiana Legislature could take two years.

He took the problem to Bertman.

Skip had another idea.

“Well, let’s go and raise the money. We’ll do it in three months.”

They raised $15 million…in three months.

The Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athletes was dedicated in November 2002.

For Bertman, the principles weren’t much different from the ones he had used to build LSU Baseball.

See what was missing.

Figure out what needed to be done.

Then do it.

Sometimes, though, Skip understood that great coaching meant doing nothing at all.

Todd Walker arrived at LSU as one of the most talented young hitters in the country. He would become a three-time All-American, a first-round draft pick and eventually spend 12 seasons in the major leagues.

Bertman recognized something about Walker almost immediately.

He didn’t need fixing.

So, even during occasional rough patches, Bertman left Walker alone.

Only after reaching the major leagues did Walker fully appreciate how unusual that was. Go 0-for-4 at that level, he remembered, and suddenly everybody has a theory about what’s wrong with your swing and what needs to change.

Bertman resisted that temptation.

“The greatest thing he did is not what he told me, it’s what he didn’t tell me,” Walker said.

Knowing when to teach mattered.

Knowing when not to teach mattered, too.

Then there was the way Skip recruited.

Doug Thompson was a highly sought-after pitcher when Mississippi State coach Ron Polk called with an enticing sales pitch.

Polk told Thompson he was the missing piece Mississippi State needed to reach Omaha and win a national championship.

Not long afterward, Thompson came home to a message on his answering machine.

It was Bertman.

Skip had heard about Polk’s pitch.

“We’re going with or without you,” he told the high schooler.

Thompson signed with LSU.

In 1997, the Tigers won the national championship…with him.

One of the most famous moments in College World Series history revealed something else about Bertman.

Bertman spent years telling his players they never knew whose turn it might be to do something that helped the team win.

Warren Morris became perhaps the ultimate example.

Morris had missed much of LSU’s 1996 season with a broken bone in his hand and had not hit a home run all year when he came to bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of the national championship game against Miami.

By now, every College Baseball fan knows what happened next.

Morris drove Robbie Morrison’s pitch over the right-field wall for the only walk-off home run ever to decide the College World Series championship.

Chaos ensued.

Players poured onto the field. Morris circled the bases. LSU celebrated another national championship.

Eventually, though, the crowd began to disperse.

And Morris found himself alone with his coach.

Bertman hugged him.

Skip wasn’t an especially emotional man, Morris remembered.

But this time was different.

“He had a tear in his eye.”

Then Bertman told Morris he was proud of him.

Of all the memories attached to one of the most celebrated home runs in Baseball history, Morris still remembers the quiet moment that came after all the noise.

As Skip preached, you never know whose turn it may be to be a hero. Here was Morris--injured much of the year, batting ninth--becoming the guy in the game’s biggest moment on the sport’s biggest stage.

And perhaps nobody understood the competitive side of Bertman better than Ron Polk.

They had known each other for roughly 60 years, dating to their days in Miami. They roomed together during summers with USA Baseball. They traveled the country to conduct 50-60 clinics together over the years. Skip even played first base on Polk’s fast-pitch softball team.

Then they spent years trying to beat each other.

Polk coached at Mississippi State and Georgia. Bertman coached at LSU.

Over the decades, their teams met 70 times.

Bertman won 35.

Polk won 35.

It is difficult to imagine a rivalry more evenly matched.

Which makes what happened as LSU prepared to close the old Alex Box Stadium even more meaningful.

The school placed numbers along the left-field line, counting down the remaining games in the ballpark. Before each game, someone associated with LSU was invited to remove another number.

One day, Bertman chose Polk.

The man who had spent decades trying to beat LSU climbed into a golf cart with his old friend and rode down the left-field line before an LSU crowd to take down the number.

Polk was the only person without LSU ties given that honor.

Seventy games.

Thirty-five wins apiece.

And nearly six decades of friendship.

There are rivalries.

And then there are relationships.

Baton Rouge sports radio host Hunt Palmer collected remembrances from former LSU players after Bertman’s death and noticed something remarkable.

The championships barely came up.

Mike Fontenot called Bertman the most influential person in his life other than his father.

Brad Cresse remembered the man who taught him how to be a teammate, leader and man.

Patrick Coogan remembered the coach who somehow knew when to call years later because you needed to hear from him.

Chris Demouy talked about teammates who remain among his closest friends 30 years later.

While he’d go on to become one of the most decorated players in LSU history, Ben McDonald learned a valuable lesson from Bertman as a freshman in 1987.

LSU led Stanford 5-2 in the bottom of the 10th inning of an elimination game at the College World Series when McDonald entered from the bullpen.

The 19-year-old right-hander hit Ed Sprague to load the bases.

Then Paul Carey hit a walk-off grand slam.

LSU’s season was over.

McDonald was devastated.

But Bertman refused to allow one terrible moment to become something larger.

McDonald later remembered Skip and his parents delivering essentially the same message:

“Do not let this moment define you.”

There were two choices. McDonald could allow the failure to stay with him and affect everything that followed, or he could use it as motivation to work harder and become better.

McDonald came to regard the moment as a turning point in his career.

Two years later, he was the No. 1 overall pick in the Major League Baseball draft.

One of the greatest players Bertman ever coached, McDonald was able to see Skip in the hospital Thursday night.

One final visit, hours before Skip would pass.

He related part of the encounter in an appearance on Friday’s Paul Finebaum Show: His beloved coach told him, “It’s the bottom of the ninth. But we won a lot of games in the bottom of the ninth.”

When McDonald learned the next morning that his coach was gone, he was grateful for the chance to tell him one more time how much he loved him.

Former LSU pitcher Doug Thompson may have explained Bertman’s legacy best.

According to Thompson, what made Skip proudest late in his life wasn’t the five championship rings.

It was that he remained close to so many of his former players 30 or 40 years later.

Skip loved sitting around with “his boys.”

Listening to the stories.

At a reunion of his 2000 championship team last year, Bertman looked around at the former players gathered together and explained why those moments meant so much to him.

“I have a memory attached to every guy,” he told them.

I understand that.

I have memories attached to Skip Bertman, too.

A young kid at Mark Light Field.

Summer baseball camps.

The first job anyone ever gave me.

A book I still own.

Golf-cart rides around The Light, listening to a man who always seemed to have something memorable to say.

Skip Bertman spent a lifetime teaching people through stories.

Now everybody else gets a turn to tell theirs.

And maybe that’s the most fitting tribute of all.

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Have you heard the one about…

…Baseball’s record-breaking riot?

Every great promoter walks a tightrope.

Play it too safe, and nobody notices.

Push the envelope too far, and nobody ever forgets.

Few people ever walked that tightrope better than Bill Veeck.

Veeck spent a lifetime convincing Baseball that a ballgame should be more than three hours of balls and strikes. He turned promotions into an art form, believing fans deserved to be entertained from the moment they walked through the turnstiles until long after the final out.

His son, Mike, inherited that same imagination.

Looking back years later, Mike smiled as he remembered that stage of his career.

“I was on fire in 1979,” he recalled. “I was 28 and every day was an idea.”

Those ideas had already helped draw attention to a struggling White Sox franchise.

Attendance had been sagging. Mike’s job was to convince Chicago that White Sox baseball was worth seeing again.

Then, on a warm July night in Chicago, one promotion crossed the invisible line between genius and disaster.

More than 45 years later, Disco Demolition Night remains one of the most infamous evenings in Baseball history.

Not because the idea was terrible.

Because it worked better than anyone imagined.

Read more

Tommy John and Dr. Frank Jobe in 1976. Their historic partnership changed the course of Baseball history.

Have you heard the one about…

…the lottery ticket that paid off and changed Baseball forever?

With Tommy John issuing a “goodbye” statement through the Yankees Sunday as the team said he’s dealing with “health issues” at his home in Bradenton, FL, today we dip into the EXTRA INNINGS archive for a look back at the transformative impact the lefthander had on Baseball and the careers of thousands of players who followed him

Have you heard the one about…

…the lottery ticket that paid off and changed Baseball forever?

For more than 50 years, “Tommy John surgery” has been almost as much a part of Baseball’s vocabulary as “double steal,” “hit-and-run” and “call to the bullpen.”

Hardly a game passes without the procedure getting a mention or two from broadcasters. Fans nervously discuss it when they see a pitcher grab his elbow. Young players wonder if they might be next in the long line of ballplayers who’ve undergone their own ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction.

The term has become so common over so many years that many fans know little about the story of the surgery’s namesake, who threw his last big league pitch in 1989.

They know the name. They don’t know the man.

Tommy John was a terrific major league pitcher. Some would argue he deserves serious Hall of Fame consideration.

Over 26 seasons, John won 288 games, made four All-Star teams and pitched in three World Series. Only 25 pitchers in major league history--none who are currently active--have won more career games.

But the truth is, Tommy John’s ultimate legacy doesn’t come from what he accomplished on the mound but from the history he made in a hospital bed.

On July 17, 1974, while pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers, John felt a pop in his left elbow while making a pitch in the top of the third inning of a start against the Montreal Expos.

“Just then, it felt as if I had thrown my arm away,” he later recalled.

The pain was immediate and unmistakable. A torn ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow was considered a death sentence for a pitcher’s career.

There was, at the time, no known medical procedure to repair it.

There was no rehabilitation roadmap.

There was no comeback from which to draw inspiration and hope.

A 31-year-old pitcher with 124 career victories appeared to have reached the end of the road.

Then came Dr. Frank Jobe.

The Dodgers’ team physician had an idea that sounded more like science fiction than medicine. He proposed removing a tendon from John’s right (non-pitching) forearm and using it to replace the damaged ligament in his left elbow.

The operation had never been performed on a major league pitcher. There was no guarantee it would work. There was no previous success story to emulate.

Even Jobe was brutally honest about all the unknowns.

“I’ve never done this operation before, and I don’t know if it will work,” he told John.

Imagine hearing those words from the man who is about to take a scalpel to your elbow.

“I just wanted to play baseball. I wanted to pitch. And the only way I was going to pitch was to get the surgery from Dr. Jobe,” John recalled years later.

Jobe was not promising a miracle. Not even a decent bet.

He was offering a lottery ticket.

According to Jobe’s medical records, he estimated John’s chances of returning to Baseball at one percent.

“Well, I’ve got nothing to lose,” John replied.

So on September 25, 1974, Tommy John agreed to become a medical experiment.

Neither man could have imagined what would happen in the months and years to come.

The rehabilitation took nearly 18 months. John had to relearn how to throw, an act he had executed hundreds of thousands of times over his 31 years. He began by tossing a ball gently with his son in the backyard, slowly rebuilding the strength and confidence that had disappeared with a single pitch on July 17, 1974.

In John’s position, and with the odds stacked against him, many would have considered simply returning to the major leagues to be a huge victory.

Tommy John did much more than that.

When he made it back to the Dodgers in 1976, he immediately picked up where he had left off as one of Baseball’s most dependable pitchers. He allowed only four runs over 19 innings in three April starts en route to pitching 207 innings over 31 starts in his first season back.

He would go on to pitch 14 seasons after his date with Dr. Jobe and to win 164 games after the surgery, pitching until 1989, three days after his 46th birthday.

Think about that.

The pitcher who had been given a one percent chance of ever throwing another major league pitch won enough games after his career was supposedly over to rank among the greatest left-handers in the history of the sport.

He worked 2,544 2/3 innings after being given a one percent chance to ever pitch again. Since John returned in 1976, only 71 pitchers have thrown more innings in their entire careers.

Despite John’s impressive initial return, the operation was so experimental that Baseball did not immediately rush to repeat it.

Doctors and players waited. They watched. They wanted to see whether Tommy John’s reconstructed elbow would truly hold up over time.

For four years, no other major league pitcher underwent the procedure.

It was not until 1978 that Brent Strom became the second patient of Jobe, shortly after having been released by the San Diego Padres.

Strom missed the entire ‘78 season, then spent the next three years trying to work his way back, throwing nearly 300 innings in the minor leagues for the Astros and Dodgers. But he never returned to the major leagues.

That serves as an important reminder. Tommy John surgery was never a miracle fix. It was a chance.

Still, it wasn’t long before the procedure became increasingly common, saving and extending careers and allowing some pitchers to come back even better than they had been before.

As the procedure began to spread throughout Baseball and medicine, one practical matter became clear: “ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction with the palmaris longus” needed a simpler name as it became part of everyday Baseball conversation.

As Jobe traveled around the country explaining his new procedure to other surgeons, he grew tired of repeating the lengthy medical name and began referring to it simply as the operation he had performed on Tommy John.

Eventually, the procedure became known simply as “Tommy John surgery.”

John has always found the irony amusing.

“I didn’t name it Tommy John surgery. Dr. Jobe did,” he said with a laugh. “So he’s the one who stuck me with that.”

As his reputation grew in sports medicine circles, Dr. Frank Jobe was hardly finished changing the sport.

49 years old when he operated on Tommy John, Jobe had already lived a remarkable life. During World War II, he landed in Normandy as a medical staff sergeant with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. He survived the Battle of the Bulge after a brief capture by German forces and returned home decorated with the Bronze Star Medal and other military honors.

His next chapter in sports medicine would be dedicated to finding solutions for injuries that had long ended the careers of athletes.

And in 1990, Jobe once again altered Baseball history by performing the first major reconstructive shoulder surgery on a major league player, helping Dodgers ace Orel Hershiser return to continue his career.

The Tommy John procedure that once seemed impossible has since become almost routine. Thousands of players (pitchers and position players)--from Little League to the major leagues--have undergone the operation. And while not every comeback is smooth, many have returned to continue careers that would have almost certainly ended prior to Jobe’s revolutionary idea in 1974.

That is Tommy John’s ultimate legacy.

He won 288 games.

He pitched for 26 seasons, debuting in 1963 (when John F. Kennedy was in the White House) and retiring in 1989 (during the George H.W. Bush administration).

He became one of the most durable pitchers of his era.

But his name became immortal because of the day his elbow failed.

The most important pitch Tommy John threw was the one that should have ended his career.

That pitch, his remarkable comeback and the innovation of a surgeon who would go on to save and extend countless careers all changed the course of Baseball history.

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Have you heard the one about…

…the catcher who invented Baseball’s secret language?

We should probably get something out of the way first.

There may not have been one.

Not one catcher, anyway. Not one inspired afternoon when somebody crouched behind the plate, flashed a finger and changed Baseball forever. There are candidates, claims and stories that surfaced years later, but there is no plaque, no patent and no undisputed inventor.

Baseball’s language of signs seems to have developed the way most languages do--slowly, gradually and out of necessity. A gesture here. A nod there. One idea passed from one team to another until variations of it had spread throughout the game.

For generations, the ritual never seemed to change. The catcher crouched behind the plate and tucked his bare hand between his legs. One finger might mean fastball. Two could mean curve. The pitcher stared toward home, either nodding in agreement or shaking his head to ask for another suggestion.

It was a private conversation conducted in front of thousands of people. Everyone could see it. Almost nobody could understand it.

And because it became such a familiar part of Baseball, few people ever stopped to ask the obvious question.

Who did it first?

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Have you heard the one about…

…the best-dressed man in Baseball?

Walk into any Major League dugout today and you’ll find the manager looking much like everyone else on the field. Full uniform. Maybe a hoodie.

Now imagine looking into the Philadelphia Athletics’ dugout a century ago.

Instead of flannel, you see a pressed white shirt, a dark three-piece suit, a neatly knotted tie and polished leather shoes.

At first glance, you’d probably assume he was the owner.

(He was. But that’s getting ahead of the story.)

The man generations of fans would come to know as Connie Mack was born Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy, the son of Irish immigrants in East Brookfield, Massachusetts, on Dec. 22, 1862.

For 50 seasons, Mack managed the Athletics exactly as he carried himself--steady, dignified, understated and unmistakably different.

Fans remembered the suit.

Opponents remembered the championships.

The people who knew him best remembered something else.

They remembered Mr. Mack.

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Have you heard the one about…

…the possible future of Baseball play-by-play?

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Have you heard the one about…

…the blockbuster deals that didn’t quite get done?

At 6 p.m. tonight, the phones will stop ringing, and MLB insiders like Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman can finally take a nap.

Major League Baseball’s 2026 trade deadline will pass tonight. General managers will be able to detach their cell phones from their ears for the first time in weeks. Players who have been on pins and needles, wondering which uniform they might be wearing by Tuesday night, can exhale. And fans and pundits can begin debating which teams won, which teams lost and which teams spent recent weeks generating far more rumors than results.

Some teams will have become better.

Some will have become cheaper.

A few may even manage to become both.

A handful will have symbolically waved the white flag on a lost season.

For weeks, every conversation has been treated as a possibility. By tonight, each will have become either a transaction or a ghost--another deal discussed, debated and ultimately abandoned before crossing the finish line.

The transaction wire will tell us everything that happened.

But it can never tell us what almost did.

Baseball history is filled with trades that came tantalizingly close to being completed. One was reportedly conceived over scotch. Another died when a manager charged into his team president’s office. A player vetoed one after being given 15 minutes to decide. The Players Association stopped another. One disappeared with two minutes remaining before the deadline.

And one three-team blockbuster came so close that a press release had already been written.

I know because I wrote it.

These were not rumors involving spare parts and middle relievers. They involved some of the greatest players in Baseball history and might have altered the course of entire franchises.

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Have you heard the one about…

…the piece of cardboard that’s been pursued for decades?

Nearly 120 years after they were printed, only about 50 known 1909 T206 Honus Wagner baseball cards survive.

That alone would make them remarkable. But there’s much more to this story.

Collectors don’t simply know the T206 Honus Wagner. They know the history of each individual card. Some are known by the collectors who owned them. Others by the peculiar journeys they’ve taken over the past century.

They know where many of them have been, who owned them, who sold them, who nearly ruined them, who restored them and how they became legendary in their own right.

Over the decades, many have even acquired names--“the Gretzky Wagner,” “the Jumbo Wagner,” “the Die-Cut Wagner,” “the Garagiola Wagner” and dozens of others whose stories have become almost as fascinating as the Hall of Fame shortstop pictured on the front.

Not famous paintings.

Not famous ships.

Not famous racehorses.

Famous pieces of cardboard measuring just 1 7/16 inches wide and 2 5/8 inches tall.

No other collectible in sports is in its class.

And none of this was supposed to happen.

If Honus Wagner had simply done nothing in 1909, his baseball card probably would have been remembered the way collectors remember hundreds of other beautiful tobacco cards from Baseball’s Deadball Era. It would have been desirable because Wagner was one of the greatest players who ever lived. And it would have been valuable because the T206 set is considered one of the hobby’s masterpieces.

But legendary?

Not a chance.

Instead, one decision--made for reasons historians still debate--transformed an ordinary cigarette insert into the Holy Grail of baseball card collecting.

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Have you heard the one about…

…Stroh’s for a dime?

It began, as so many bad ideas do, with the best of intentions.

The Cleveland Indians simply wanted to sell more tickets.

They had tried just about everything. Tightrope walkers. Comedy softball exhibitions. Family nights. Cash giveaways. They even talked about bringing in Evel Knievel.

Then someone suggested selling Stroh's for a dime.

Cheap-beer promotions weren't unusual in the early 1970s. What happened in Cleveland was.

More than a half century later, 10-Cent Beer Night remains at or near the top of any list of worst promotions in Baseball history. It has become part of Baseball folklore, a story told and retold every summer whenever a team announces another gimmick to try to boost sagging attendance.

As for that night in 1974, the cheap beer gets most of the blame.

And it probably deserves it.

But that’s only part of the story.

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Have you heard the one about…

…Baseball’s “nothing” pitch?

Every sport has its own language.

Football has the Hail Mary. Basketball has the alley-oop. Hockey has the hat trick.

Baseball, though, has enough colorful expressions to fill its own dictionary.

Can of corn.

Texas Leaguer.

Frozen rope.

Baltimore chop.

Chin music.

And then...

The eephus.

Perhaps no Baseball term sounds more mysterious.

Imagine you’re standing in the batter’s box.

You’ve spent your entire baseball life preparing to hit a 90-mph fastball.

Instead, the pitcher lobs the ball almost straight into the sky.

It climbs.

It hangs.

It seems to stop.

And then...

It finally begins a slow descent toward home plate.

That’s the eephus.

The crowd starts laughing before it even arrives. Even the hitter usually can't help but smile.

But here’s the question almost nobody asks:

Why is it called an eephus?

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Baseball has always produced great stories. It has also produced great storytellers. Some were Hall of Famers. Some were bench players. Some were reporters who happened to be standing nearby when someone delivered the perfect line.

What follows is a collection of some of the funniest things ever said around a ballpark--proof that wit can be just as memorable as a walk-off home run (even when it may not necessarily have been intended).

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Have you heard the one about…

…baseball’s first Japanese import?

Shohei Ohtani seems to rewrite baseball history every time he takes the field.

Last summer, Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese-born player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Before them came Hideo Nomo, Hideki Matsui, Yu Darvish and other standouts who transformed the relationship between baseball in the United States and Japan.

Today, it’s impossible to imagine baseball without these names and others among the 88 total Japanese-born players who have appeared in the major leagues into late July of 2026.

But here’s a question not many baseball fans can answer:

When did this story begin?

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