What baseball stories from the early days of the sport seem too bizarre to be true?
07.06.2025 09:10
The first spring training was aptly held at Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1886 when the Chicago White Sox set up camp there.
The home run king before Babe Ruth was Roger Connor. Have you ever wondered why the Giants are called the Giants? The team changed its name from the New York Gothams to the Giants because Connor stood 6-3 and weighed 220 pounds. The average man in the late 1800s stood 5-7 and weighed 140 pounds. So Connor would have seemed like a giant, towering over enemy baserunners at first base. Connor hit MLB's first grand slam and also hit the first ball out of the Polo Grounds (a feat so impressive Wall Street executives rewarded him with a $500 gold watch). Connor also invented the pop-up slide, which must have really scared the infield munchkins of his era!
Bob Ferguson had one of early baseball's more unusual nicknames: "Death to Flying Things." But as far as I can tell, it was because of his ability to spear balls out of the sky, not for killing our feathered friends!
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False advertising? Home Run Baker stood 5-11, weighed 170 pounds, and never hit more than 12 home runs in a season. He retired with 96 career homers, fewer than Pee Wee Reese, Minnie Minoso, Granny Hamner and Tillie Walker.
BIZARRE BASEBALL STORIES
Dave Winfield, a hall-of-fame outfielder playing for the Yankees in 1983, was arrested for killing a seagull with a thrown ball. The cop who arrested him and fans who witnessed the event claimed that Winfield hit the bird deliberately. But Yankees manager Billy Martin questioned whether Winfield possessed the necessary accuracy: "Cruelty to animals? That's the first time he hit the cut-off man all year!"
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Ted Williams once flipped his bat in anger after a strikeout and in horror watched it strike his landlady, who was sitting in a seat he had provided for her!
by Michael R. Burch
On July 17, 1914, the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates were engaged in a marathon 21-inning game. Having scored two runs to break a 1-1 tie, the Giants took the field hoping to end the drawn-out affair. The skies were dark and threatening. Giants outfielder Red Murray camped under a fly ball that would finally end the game! But after making the catch, Murray was struck by a bolt of lightning which rendered him unconscious. (He apparently hung on to the ball.)
The aptly named Chief Bender may have thrown the first slider.
Rube Waddell may have been the most eccentric baseball player of all time. He was famous (or infamous) for leaving the mound during games to chase fire engines. Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack recalled, "He always wore a red undershirt, so that when the fire bell rang he could pull off his coat, thus exposing his crimson credentials, and gallop off to the blaze." Rube would be late for games because he stopped to pet dogs and kittens, or because he was distracted by shiny objects. He once missed a start because he stopped to play marbles with kids outside the stadium. He would do cartwheels back to the dugout after striking out the side. Rube spent money so rashly on women and booze that the Athletics paid him in dollar bills, hoping they'd last longer. He drank so much that sportswriters dubbed him a "sousepaw." When he ran out of cash, Rube would bartend to earn more drinking money. He claimed not to be able to remember how many women he'd married and was accused by one of his wives of bigamy. He wrestled alligators and was once bitten by a lion! He had a clause in his contract that forbade him to eat Animal Crackers in bed, because the crumbs kept his roommate awake. Rube Waddell was born on Friday the 13th and died, no joke, on April Fool's Day in a sanitarium in Texas. But he was a great pitcher. Waddell led the AL in strikeouts for six consecutive seasons, setting a major league mark of 349 in 1904 that stood for the next 61 years. And that still remains the record for an AL lefthander, more than a century later. Waddell was the unchallenged strikeout king of the 1900s, leading the AL in strikeouts per nine innings for seven consecutive seasons, from 1902 to 1908. Connie Mack called Waddell "the atom bomb of baseball long before the atom bomb was discovered" and said "He had more stuff than any pitcher I ever saw. He had everything but a sense of responsibility."
However, the Bambino was not the only former pitcher to win an AL batting title. Let's allow Goose Goslin to explain in his own words: "It was 1920 and I was twenty years old. Well, it turned out that professional ball [Class C Sally League] was a little different from sandlot ball. Around here I used to be quite a pitcher. That's what I thought, anyway. Used to strike 'em out one after the other. But down there it seemed like the harder I threw the ball the harder they hit it." Goslin switched to left field, which is where Clark Griffith saw him playing dodge ball and not always succeeding. But the Goose could hit. In 1928, the converted pitcher had a chance to win the AL batting title. He and Heinie Manush were both hitting .378 and happened to be playing against each other in the final game of the season. (More baseball weirdness, because the Babe won his only AL batting title with a .378 average!) It all came down to Goslin's last at-bat. He was ahead by a fraction. If he didn't make an out, the coveted batting title would be his! Goose's manager gave him the option of not going to the plate. But a teammate, Joe Judge, judged that people would call Goslin yellow if he took the easy way out. So the Goose decided to risk hitting. Almost immediately, the pitcher had two strikes on him. Then Goslin had a brainstorm: he'd get the umpire to throw him out of the game! No official at-bat and the batting title was his! So the Goose called umpire Bill Guthrie every name in the book, stomped on his toes, and pushed him. But his goose was cooked because Guthrie knew what he was up to and refused to oblige. According to Goslin's retelling of the tale, he got a lucky hit and won the batting title "fair and square" (sorta, if failing to succeed at cheating is "fair").
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During WWII the US military created a grenade the size and weight of a baseball because "any young American man should be able to properly throw it."
On March 24, 2001, during the seventh inning of a spring training game between the Diamondback and Giants, a wayward dove flew into a Randy Johnson heater and literally exploded into a shower of white feathers. Unfortunately, the small symbol of peace did not survive. The event can be viewed on YouTube, and there is a picture of Jeff Kent holding the nude corpse like a tiny plucked turkey.
John Dillinger once played professional baseball, although he never made it to the majors. The young Johnny Dillinger was a star shortstop so quick he was nicknamed "Jackrabbit."
"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is baseball's unofficial anthem, traditionally sung during the "seventh inning stretch" at ballparks far and wide. The song was written in 1908 by Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer, neither of whom had never been to a baseball game!
"Germany" Schaefer modified his moniker to "Liberty" Schaefer after the United States declared war on Germany in 1917.
A hall-of-fame outfielder with accuracy issues was also "for the birds." Goose Goslin made playing left field an adventure. When Clark Griffith scouted Goslin, one fly ball hit him in the head and another barely missed his noggin. Shades of Jose Canseco, who once headed a fly ball into the stands for the world's most unusual homer! But Goslin hit three homers that day and Griffith decided to take a chance on the young slugger. Goslin was called "Goose" due to the ungainly way he flapped his arms around while pursuing fly balls (that is, when not dodging or heading them). Goslin's throwing arm was powerful but similarly erratic. After bringing up Goose from the minors, the Washington Senators were forced to trade for a young Joe Cronin because their starting shortstop was "exhausted" and had "begun to lose weight rapidly in the summer heat" from running around retrieving Goslin's wayward throws!
Cy Young, another legendary pitcher, was traded for a suit.
But please give the Goose a break, because it is highly unusual for a great hitter to also be a great defender. According to Fangraphs, only four of the top 100 defensive players had a wRC+ of 125 or higher: Honus Wagner (the #49 defender), Willie Mays (#64), Johnny Bench (#77) and Mike Schmidt (#89). There are your real two-way superstars. But what if we consider pitchers the prime defenders? Then we can add Babe Ruth as a two-way superstar. Ruth had one of the best pitching seasons of all time in 1916, when he won 23 games with nine shutouts and a miniscule 1.75 ERA. That year he out-dueled the great Walter Johnson, going 3-1 against the Big Train. In one of the greatest pitcher duels of all time, Ruth pitched a 13-inning shutout, besting Johnson in a 1-0 victory. In the World Series that year, Ruth pitched a still-record 14 innings in a 2-1 win. I think Ruth has a valid claim to be the best two-way player of all time. Baseball's greatest hitter might have been its greatest pitcher if he had stuck to the mound.
What's even lighter than a high-flyin' bird? A butterfly. And Stu Miller, a lightweight at only 165 pounds, was called the Butterfly Man. But Stu was a pretty good pitcher and he managed to make his first and only all-star team at age 33 in 1961 ... only to be blown off the mound by a gust of wind in famously breezy Candlestick Park! Talk about a "butterfly effect" because that would be the only balk of his career!
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How did the name Louisville Slugger originate? Known as the "Louisville Slugger" for his impressive power, Pete Browning was the first player to purchase bats from the company and they adopted the name to capitalize on his fame. But alas, Browning was one of the worst fielders in major league baseball history. He did, however, have an excuse because he regularly played drunk! Browning could apparently hit drunk, as his career batting average of .341 is one of the highest on record. He was reported to have said: "I can't hit the ball until I hit the bottle!" Browning was also known as "The Gladiator," although sources differ as to whether the nickname applied to his struggles with ownership, the press, his drinking problem, or those elusive fly balls! When Browning signed with the Pittsburg franchise, he helped give it the nickname "Pirates" when other teams claimed it was an act of "piracy" for Pittsburg to sign free agents (a revolutionary idea at the time).
Robin Roberts threw a perfect game on May 13, 1954 ... 27 batters up, 27 batters retired with no hits, walks, errors, or base runners of any kind. But he still gave up a run. How did our plucky Robin pull off such a miracle? By starting a batter too late. He gave up a home run to the leadoff hitter, then threw a perfect game. And it wasn't exactly a fluke, because Roberts held the record for most home runs given up by a pitcher for nearly 50 years. That record was only broken recently by Jamie Moyer, who had to serve up gopher balls till age 49 in order to claim the not-so-coveted prize!
Babe Ruth was the best left-handed pitcher of his era, and Red Sox manager Ed Barrow was understandably reluctant to tamper with success by letting him play in the field. But in 1918 when Barrow finally agreed to let the Bambino play on his non-pitching days, Ruth hit home runs in four consecutive games and the rest―as they say―is history.
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Lefty Grove, a Hall-of-Fame pitcher, was traded for a fence while playing for the Martinsburg Mountaineers in 1920.
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On August 17, 1957, future hall-of-fame centerfielder Richie Ashburn of the Philadelphia Phillies hit spectator Alice Roth with a foul ball, breaking her nose. As Roth was being carted off the field on a stretcher, Ashburn hit her with another foul ball, breaking a bone in her knee. The odds of a fan being hit by a baseball are 300,000 to one. The odds of the same fan being hit twice during the same at-bat, and breaking bones both times, are beyond astronomical.
They said Ted Williams couldn't hit to left, but he could with the proper motivation. During an early-season game in 1942 a fan in the left field stands was heckling Williams for not enlisting after Pearl Harbor. Williams proceeded to slam foul balls into the fan's area, trying to hit him or shut him up!
Bob Feller once hit his mother with a hard foul ball. Again, what are the odds? Especially since Feller was a pitcher and unlikely to make hard contact in the first place!