This Day in Baseball History (Ryne Duren Sets League Consecutive K’s Record)

June 9, 1961—With a new team and new pitching role, Ryne Duren—a right-handed hurler with a reputation for having as little control of himself as over his overpowering fastball—looked on the verge of turning over a new leaf, striking out an American League record seven consecutive Red Sox on his way to 11 in 6 2/3 innings, in the veteran’s first start in his major-league career.

An All-Star reliever with the New York Yankees, Duren had been traded the month before to the expansion Los Angeles Angels when his off-the-field behavior became increasingly erratic. His new manager, Bill Rigney, saw enough potential to convert him to a starter.

For a while, the experiment worked splendidly. Three weeks later, he earned some revenge against the Bronx Bombers, not only fanning a career-high 12 batters in eight innings on his way to a 5-3 victory but even uncharacteristically contributing to his own cause by singling in two runs.

But the emotional vulnerability afflicting Duren even when batters feared his fastball returned when he was at his zenith in 1961, while getting ready to play in his third All-Star game in four years. The news that his two-week old infant son Craig had died sent Duren on an alcoholic spree that ended his marriage and, four years and three teams later, his professional career.

In a way, Duren’s notoriously poor eyesight (his Yankee catcher, Yogi Berra, observed, “he had several pair of glasses, but it didn’t seem like he saw good in any of them”) was symbolic. 

An alcoholic in deep denial, he did not see how much his drinking was endangering his performance, his livelihood, his teammates, and his family for too long. Out of baseball after 1965, he was reduced to a series of dead-end jobs and living in a flophouse and made two suicide attempts.

Fortunately, the story of Ryne Duren doesn’t end there. After a 22-month treatment in DePaul Hospital in Milwaukee, he became sober, and from 1968 to his death at age 81 in 2011, served as an addiction counselor, advising not only youths about how to avoid or forsake alcohol and drugs but also many current and former major leaguers.

One, Yankee teammate Mickey Mantle, was in denial when Duren initially tried to coax him into recognizing his problem. But when the slugger finally embraced sobriety in 1994, his decision to publicly reveal his registration at the Betty Ford Clinic was influenced by his fellow ex-carouser’s public example.

“That guy [Duren] when he was playing ball, was a wreck and he whipped it,” he told friend Bill Hooten, according to Jane Leavy’s Mantle biography, The Last Boy. “He got around talking, and he does a lot of good. If I can go out there and come back and the fact that I’ve whipped the drinking can help somebody else, then sure, I want that known.”

Duren was one of a small but significant group of ex-ballplayers who, after recognizing their problem, went on to help others as substance abuse counselors, including, most prominently, Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers, “Sudden Sam” McDowell of the Cleveland Indians, Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and 1970s journeyman Michael Jackson. I am sure there are others who played different positions, but all of the people I just mentioned were pitchers.

I became interested in this subject for several reasons: a couple of friends who are substance abuse counselors, my long-time fascination with everything related to the New York Yankees, and my interest in baseball history.

In the case of the latter, I have thought often about another friend who, through his career, has become a mother lode of baseball history. He told me once that the incidence of alcoholism in America’s pastime was high. It was possible, he thought, that as many as one out of four Baseball Hall of Famers had drinking problems. 

One, “Big Ed Delahanty,” died from a fall into the Niagara River after a drunk-and-disorderly incident; other past members, such as Mantle, Babe Ruth, and Hack Wilson (whom I profiled in this 2010 post), are well known; and more recent ones have not been publicized, so to protect their privacy I will leave that to disclosures by themselves or their eventual biographers.

Quantifying substance abuse among past ballplayers is difficult, but my reading indicates that the problem was common. 

Any genetic susceptibility to alcohol was worsened by the environment of past decades: clubhouse drinking as a means of celebrating or even simply unwinding after games; late-night games followed by after-hours companionship; travel and isolation from family and friends on the part of young men who still feel invulnerable; and stressed-out managers in no condition to preach after leaving their own difficulties in the bar.

Today’s players struggling with addiction, though, benefit from changes in the game and society since Duren’s time in baseball:

*Alcoholics Anonymous has become a better known and recognized form of help;

*Awareness of fitness and nutrition includes substance abuse prevention and recovery, as well as liquid alternatives such as cherry juice, smoothies, and protein shakes;

*Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement has formalized the process of evaluation, treatment and recovery;

*High payrolls have increased the incentive for owners and general managers to become proactive about abuse, including some teams that have banned alcohol use in clubhouses and on planes;

*Social media decreases the likelihood that alcohol-fueled indiscretions will be hushed up and perpetuated;

*The stigma of admitting to substance abuse has lowered;

*Many players see marijuana as an acceptable alternative to alcohol.

Other Yankees had longer, more consequential careers than Duren, but even while playing—well before his great contributions to substance abuse awareness among athletes—he had impacted the game as a pitcher.

When he entered games, the slang used for his position was “fireman,” the relief pitcher designated to prevent or contain the damage from mound emergencies. Nowadays, with the use and responsibility of these hurlers refined and defined, they are called “closers.”

After being acquired from the Kansas City A’s midseason in 1957, Duren took over the fireman/closer niche that Joe Page had once occupied for the Yankees. He soon became a fan favorite, with his routine recounted vividly in Marty Appel’s Yankee history, Pinstripe Empire:

“…scaling the low right-field bullpen fence, glancing at the auxiliary scoreboard to check the situation, tossing the warm-up jacket to the waiting batboy, kicking the dirt off his spikes against the rubber, and then firing his first warm-up pitch into the backstop (to frighten the waiting hitter).”

This Day in Baseball History (Willie Mays Clubs 1st HR)

May 28, 1951—Decisively ending an 0-12 hitless streak that seemed to confirm his initial fears about joining the major leagues, 20-year-old New York Giants rookie Willie Mays hit the first of his 660 career home runs.

In his first at-bat at the team’s home, the Polo Grounds, their newly installed center fielder smacked an offering from star Boston Braves southpaw Warren Spahn over the left-field fence, for what was also his first career hit.

My blog post from 10 years ago briefly reviewed the amazing career of the man that many have proclaimed the best all-around ballplayer of all time. But I think it’s worth spending a little time here on his introduction to the big leagues, as well as how it compared and contrasted with that of rookie and legendary Hall of Famer, Mickey Mantle.

These two were not the only future Hall of Famers to experience difficulties when first exposed to the big leagues. Others, such as Willie Stargell, Brooks Robinson, Pie Traynor, and Roberto Clemente, had relatively subpar campaigns even over their first five seasons, as demonstrated in this 2012 Jim McLennan post on the “AZ Snake Pit” blog.

But the spotlight shone more intensely in New York, the media and sports capital of America—and Mays wasn’t yet over his yips at the plate. He then proceeded to go on another hitless streak: 0-13. At this turning point in his career, as he sat sobbing in front of his locker, he found reassurance from a manager not otherwise known for being soft-hearted: Leo Durocher.

Though he had clashed with Jackie Robinson while managing the Brooklyn Dodgers, Durocher took a gentler approach with this less mature but still immensely talented player now under his wing.

When Mays repeated what he had told him previously while in the Giants’ top minor-league club, the Minneapolis Millers—i.e., that he doubted his ability to hit major-league pitching—Durocher answered, “As long as I’m the manager of the Giants, you are my center fielder. … You are the best center fielder I’ve ever looked at.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, and justifying his manager’s confidence, Mays went on a 14-for-33 tear. He sparked the team’s thrilling pennant run that season, winning Rookie of the Year honors with 20 home runs, 68 RBIs, and a .274 batting average in 121 games—not to mention playing dazzling defense.

There couldn’t have been a more dramatic contrast to another much-heralded outfielder that year, Mantle. Though some veteran New York Yankees like Hank Bauer sought to make him comfortable, the “Commerce [Oklahoma] Comet” was well aware that he was regarded as an interloper and ultimate threat to job security by the Bombers’ proud but fading superstar fixture in center field, Joe DiMaggio.

In contrast to Durocher, Yankee manager Casey Stengel—after successfully overriding the advice of general manager George Weiss that their hot young prospect was not ready for the majors—felt the need to send Mantle back to the minors when his strikeouts began to mount.

It’s now part of Bomber legend how a tough-love visit from Mantle’s father Mutt led his son to surmount his funk and for Stengel to call him back up—as the team’s current rightfielder and centerfielder-in-waiting—in late August. Mantle ended the season hitting .267 with 13 home runs, 65 RBIs, and a .792 OPS.

While Stengel managed Mantle for the first 10 years of his career, Durocher only benefited from having Mays in his lineup for three. (The “Say Hey Kid” served in the Army from May 1952 through March 1954, causing him to miss most of one season and all of another, and his manager was fired after a third-place finish in 1954.)

Nevertheless, that short period of time was enough to make the crusty Durocher speak glowingly about him for the rest of his life, as seen in this passage from his autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last:

“If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and field. And he had the other magic ingredient that turns a superstar into a super Superstar. Charisma. He lit up a room when he came in. He was a joy to be around.”

If Durocher served as a kind of proud surrogate father to his young superstar, Stengel often acted as a demanding, frequently disappointed one to his. Early to see Mantle’s immense gifts, he also frequently grew frustrated with him for not paying attention to constructive construction and for not measuring up to a standard for what he could be.

The dissing of his best player may have reached a nadir in 1959, when Stengel listed Hank Bauer, Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto as his best players, according to Jane Leavy’s The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood. Pressed by Bauer about this noticeable exclusion, Stengel answered, “You gave 110 percent every time you were in the lineup.”

I couldn’t finish this post without looking at one particular aspect of this landmark game in the career of Mays.

The at-bat against Spahn was not only an indicator of his future greater greatness, but also a sign of his comfort at the plate against the Hall of Fame hurler. In 253 plate appearances against him, Mays hit 18 homers (the most he accumulated against any pitcher), while batting .305. with a .955 OPS.

Since the run he gave up to Mays was his only one in his 4-1 victory, Spahn took the first round-tripper by Mays in stride, joking later, “For the first 60 feet, that was a hell of a pitch."

I suspect that it was harder for him to accept another he yielded in July 1963, when, on the mound for the Milwaukee Braves, he lost his chance at outdueling the (now San Francisco) Giants’ Juan Marichal in the 16^th inning when, after 16 innings and 201 pitches, he watched his chance at a complete-game shutout disappear through  Mays’ solo HR.

This Day in Baseball History (Death of Harmon Killebrew, Unassuming But Feared Slugger)

May 17, 2011— Harmon Killebrew, as eager-to-please a personality as ever to step onto a baseball diamond, yet so feared for his home run prowess that he earned the nickname “Killer”—died at age 74 of esophageal cancer at his Scottsdale, AZ home.

For most of two decades, it was Killebrew’s misfortune to play—first in Washington, DC, then in Minnesota—for owner Calvin Griffith, who low-balled him at salary time. 

After he retired, misfortune often took a more dire financial form: car dealership and car leasing firms whose failure ultimately, despite his healthy sums from sports memorabilia appearances, pushed him towards bankruptcy in 1993.

Killebrew was honest enough to admit feeling stressed by all of this, but he soldiered on, demonstrating why he was liked and respected not just by fellow baseball players but by sportswriters, who finally elected him to Cooperstown, after three missed tries, in 1984.

Though nothing like the versatile “five-tool player” (hitting for average, hitting for power, speed, arm strength, fielding ability) held up as the beau ideal of everyday players, Killebrew possessed one skill in abundance: slugging home runs.

The 573 round-trippers he amassed at the end of his 22-season career ranked fifth at the time of his retirement. Even that statistic doesn’t indicate the frequency, consistency and force with which he punished the ball.

Starting with the Washington Senators, then moving when the team became the Minnesota Twins before closing out his career after one season with the Kanas City Royals, Killebrew recorded eight 40-home run seasons and 44 multiple home run games. He led the AL in home runs six times, walks four times and RBI three times. 

Named to 13 All-Star teams, he was selected Most Valuable Player for the American League in 1969, when he led the Twins to the American League West Division championship.

Ossie Bluege, the farm system director who scouted and signed him for the Washington Senators, observed: "He hit line drives that put the opposition in jeopardy. And I don't mean infielders, I mean outfielders." 

Griffith took note of these tape-measure homers: “He would hit the ball so blooming high in the sky, they were like a rocket ship going up in the air.”

That bat was what kept Killebrew in the lineup game after game, year after year, despite a glove that most observers of the game thought was suspect. But in his defense, he never spent enough time at one position to master it. 

According to Mark Armour’s post shortly after Killebrew’s death, “he was repeatedly shifted between three defensive positions throughout his career, getting 44% of his starts at first base, 33% at third base, and 22% in left field.”

Off the field, Killebrew’s benevolence sprang from a belief that “The most important reason that we're here on Earth is to love and help one another.” To that end, he became involved in several charitable activities, including:

*helping to establish, in Sun Valley, ID, the Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament (named after a Twins teammate who died of leukemia);

*creating the Harmon Killebrew Signature Classic Golf Tournament to benefit the American Red Cross; and,

*starting the Harmon Killebrew Foundation, a fund-raising charity.

This Day in Baseball History (Yankees’ Pennock Outduels A’s Grove Over 15 Innings)

July 4, 1925—The 50,000 fans who took advantage of the Independence Day holiday to throng Yankee Stadium thought they were watching an extra-innings pitchers’ duel between the Bronx Bombers and the Philadelphia Athletics. But actually, they were present at the creation of two mini-dynasties whose rivalry would play out over the next half-dozen years, with the two competing to dominate the American League.

When it was over two hours and 50 minutes later, the A’s highly touted, 25-year-old rookie, Robert "Lefty" Grove, lost on a sacrifice fly in the 15^th inning by the New York Yankees’ catcher Steve O'Neill, while 31-year-old veteran Herb Pennock (pictured) used guile to survive and come away with the 1-0 win in the first game of a double-header.

(If you want to know: the second game that day was shorter and less eventful: a 2-hour, 8-5 loss for the Yankees.)

Fans have witnessed some remarkable Independence Days at Yankee Stadium over the years—notably Dave Righetti’s 1983 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox and a dying Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” in what was, in effect, the first Old Times Game. But two Hall of Fame pitchers matching zeroes had to be extra special.

I have no idea of the full extent of what Grove and Pennock endured that afternoon because I can find no record for the temperature and pitch counts then. Even so, the two lefthanders had to surmount considerable frustration, knowing that their offenses could give them no breathing room.

True to form, the cool, unflappable Pennock pitched to contact and painted the corners, finishing the day with five strikeouts, four hits and, equally important, no walks. Grove notched 10 strikeouts—every one of them a necessity to get out of jams, as he yielded five walks and 14 hits.

Powerhouses that had formerly won World Series, both the Yankees and the A’s were being retooled by their front-office executives, Ed Barrow with New York and Connie Mack (who doubled as manager) for Philadelphia.

The Yankees, having won three straight pennants from 1921 through 1923 and a World Series in the latter year, fell to second place in the American League in 1924. In the first half of 1925, they had to deal with two months without Babe Ruth, with a medical ailment dubbed the "Bellyache Heard Around the World." After sitting on the bench for two years, the promising Lou Gehrig did not replace Wally Pipp at first base until June 1. 

The team that became immortalized as “Murderers’ Row” was making do, as much as they could, with pitchers that Barrow had acquired since coming over from the Red Sox, such as Pennock, George Pipgras, and “Sad Sam” Jones.

The A’s had gone through a fallow period after their 1910-14 pennants, but Mack was now assembling a talented young squad that included future Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, and Jimmie Foxx. 

But, as I wrote in this post from 2011, the most ferociously competitive of this bunch was Lefty Grove—so volatile that, after (another) hard-luck 1-0 loss that deprived him of a chance for a 17^th-consecutive victory, he wrecked the A’s stall lockers, not to mention his uniform.

Neither the A’s (88-64-1, good for second place in the AL) nor the Yankees (69-85, seventh place) gave their fans much to cheer about in 1925. But they would return to form the following year, with the Yankees winning three straight pennants and two World Series from 1926 through 1928 and the A’s doing likewise from 1929 through 1931. Both teams have fair claims for being considered among the greatest of all time. 

This Day in Baseball History (Birth of Rogers Hornsby, Irascible ‘Rajah’ of Hitting)

Apr. 27, 1896— Rogers Hornsby, still considered a century after his prime to be the greatest right-handed hitter in baseball history—and a certain part of any all-star lineup of the sport’s surliest characters—was born in Winters, Texas.

Like virtually all baseball fans, I was first intrigued by Hornsby through a number associated with him: .358, giving him a lifetime batting average second only to Ty Cobb.

But my attention was gripped by him even more when I came across Fay Vincent’s Wall Street Journal piece from a few weeks ago. The former baseball commissioner had a tough time restraining his scorn for one of those new-school metricnomes who suggested that Jeff Kent might be the best righthand-hitting second baseman of all time.

Not a chance, Vincent countered, pointing to a stat that, he thought, was about as unlikely to be broken as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game consecutive hitting streak: Hornsby’s five-year stretch from 1921 to 1925, when the St. Louis Cardinal compiled a collective .402 batting average.

That achievement would have amazed Hughes’ teammates when he came to the majors in September 1915, when the thin youngster hit only .246 in less than a month. After the season, the young shortstop asked St. Louis Cardinals manager Miller Huggins what he should do. Huggins said, “Kid, you’re a little light, but you’ve got the makings.  I think I’ll farm you out for a year.”

Hornsby took Huggins’ colloquial advice more literally than was intended, immediately going to his uncle’s house, where during the offseason he performed as much farm labor, ate fried chicken and steak, and drank as much milk as he could stand.

When he returned to the Cardinals in the spring, Hornsby had added 30 pounds to his thin 135-pound frame, all of it muscle (and with none of it subverted by the common banes of that era, drinking and smoking). The strategy was the exact opposite of the one employed over this past winter by the Toronto Blue Jays’ first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who, after an aggressive conditioning program, has sweated off 42 pounds since last July. But the results were the same: a higher batting average (.313 for Hornsby, .338 for Guerrero at this point in the season).

Power would come in time: 301 homers during his 23-year career, to go along with two Triple Crowns, two MVP trophies, and seven National League batting titles.

What accounted for this power surge? The aforementioned muscle, along with standing back more in the batter’s box, abandoning choking up on the bat, and benefiting from the end of the “dead ball” era that saw the fadeout of the spitball.

But nobody could overlook Hornsby’s volcanic intensity and commitment to the game. "People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball,” Hornsby once drawled. “I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

"The greatest right-handed hitter?" fellow Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner asked Marty Noble in a 2013 article. "Doesn't it have to be him? Who else did what he did?"

Who else indeed?

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story for “The Rajah” (a nickname meant as a counterpart to Babe Ruth’s “Sultan of Swat,” and, of course, a play on his first name). Baseball historian Bill James picked him for “the biggest horse’s ass in baseball history.” In the mega-contract, steroid era of the last three decades, Hornsby has gained some stiff competition for the title, but the following characteristics continue to keep him ahead of the pack:

*Superstitious: Hornsby refused to go to movies because he believed cinemas’ flickering lights would damage his eyesight, and offered the same reason for why he professed to read nothing more than newspaper headlines. As former commissioner Vincent noted waggishly in his Hornsby piece: “Genius often comes wrapped in eccentricities.”

*Cocky: He came by it early. Complimented as a 15-year-old about his play at second base, he responded, “Yeah, and there are eight other positions I can play just as good,” according to an article for the Society of American Baseball Research by C. Paul Rogers III.

*Irascible: Spelling his first name without the "s" was the least thing guaranteed to set the player off. “Hornsby knew more about baseball and less about diplomacy than anyone I ever knew,” one sportswriter observed about Hornsby. Calling his teammates “stool pigeons” one season was among the milder of his insults. The tactlessness was even worse when directed publicly towards individual players.

*Aloof: He didn’t bother communicating to players, fleeing the clubhouse as soon after a game as he could.

*Unhygienic: His quickness out of the clubhouse was enhanced by his speed in the showers—on the occasions when he deigned to take any.

*Unfaithful: With his cold personality, I’m not sure how Hornsby managed to get any woman at all, but he wed three—and, after his playing days were over, employed a mistress as his secretary. After being named in a divorce suit by an irate husband, he married the woman involved, Jeannette Pennington Hine. (Andrew Martin described the litigation—as well as the driving and gambling issues that also surrounded the slugger—in a 2011 article, "The Troubled Life of Rogers Hornsby.") I don’t think you’ll be surprised to learn that, over the course of three decades with Hornsby, Jeannette took to drink.

*Antisemitic: While managing the Cincinnati Reds in 1952, Hornsby—unaware that Gabe Paul was Jewish—made an antisemitic remark to the general manager. After the season, Hornsby told a reporter he believed this was the real reason he was fired. Possibly—plus the fact that Hornsby never apologized.

*Racist: Veteran sportswriter Fred Lieb claimed that Hornsby had admitted to membership in the Ku Klux Klan. That assertion has never been verified. But Hornsby did occasionally boycott playing against black teams. That could not have eased his embarrassment when a young Satchel Paige struck him out five times in a barnstorming game.

*Toxic: Though he managed the Cardinals to a memorable World Series win over the New York Yankees in 1926, Hornsby continually wore out his welcome in the clubhouse. At the major-league level, he managed—and was fired from—six different ballclubs. He gambled so heavily on horses and accumulated such a frightening amount of debt that he was traded from the Cardinals after the 1926 season and fired as player-manager of the St. Louis Browns in 1937. In 1952, hired again by the Browns, he lasted only 51 games before he was terminated by Bill Veeck. The grateful players gave the owner a three-foot trophy that they had inscribed, “To Bill Veeck: For the greatest play since the Emancipation Proclamation.” 

Hornsby remained committed to his hard-bitten style all the way to the end of his life. Only he could have written, a year before his death in 1963, a memoir entitled, My War With Baseball.