Posted on 05/25/2010 3:36:04 AM PDT by ICAB9USA
Fifty years ago Harvey Haddix threw 12 perfect innings—more than any pitcher before or since—and then lost.
How the unassuming lefty's brilliant effort turned bittersweet.
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HARVEY HADDIX stepped onto the rain-softened mound and exhaled. It was May 26, 1959, nearing 10 o'clock on a muggy night in half-empty Milwaukee County Municipal Stadium. Dark clouds loomed overhead in the windswept sky, lightning flickered in the distance. There were two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Pittsburgh Pirates lefthander tugged at the bill of his black cap, glared at his catcher from underneath and nodded. Not one player on the field had said anything to him that even hinted at what he was on the verge of accomplishing. Later, when Haddix stepped up to bat, Milwaukee Braves catcher Del Crandall would break the silence and state the obvious: "Hey, you're pitching a pretty good game."
All night long Haddix's head had been foggy from a nasty cold and all the lozenges he'd been popping in between innings, but he was well aware he had a no-hitter going—he couldn't ignore all the white zeros on the scoreboard below the COME TO MARLBORO COUNTRY sign beyond right centerfield. Haddix thought he had walked a batter earlier in the game, but he hadn't.
Facing one of the National League's most feared lineups, the 33-year-old was one out away from pitching the seventh perfect game in major league history. By now radio stations across the country, as far west as Los Angeles, as far east as North Carolina, had picked up the broadcast of KDKA in Pittsburgh. Just outside Springfield, Ohio, Haddix's wife, Marcia, sat in the family car in her mother's driveway and listened to static-filled radio play-by-play.
(Excerpt) Read more at sportsillustrated.cnn.com ...
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"Haddix's dominance becomes more remarkable when you realize that many of the Braves' hitters knew what pitches were coming. In 1989, when a number of players from both teams were present at a banquet in Pittsburgh commemorating the game's 30th anniversary, former Milwaukee pitcher Bob Buhl pulled Haddix aside. "You know we were stealing signs during the game?" he asked."
"Buhl told him that pitchers in the Braves' bullpen peered through binoculars to pick up the signs Burgess flashed to Haddix. One reliever then signaled the batter: towel on the shoulder meant fastball, no towel meant breaking ball. All but one Milwaukee hitter, Aaron, took the signals. "There were rumors that they might be stealing signs that series," says Smith, "but none of us knew they were doing it that night.""
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LOL
Is there a baseball **ping list** here at FR?
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"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.
"The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today ..... a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped and summer was gone.""
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Haddix's game was pitched against the team that had just represented the NL in the previous two World Series. Milwaukee had a great lineup.
I remember that game very, very well .......... listening to it on a little black transistor radio in bed in Pittsburgh.
//(That night) I could have put a cup on either corner of the plate and hit it. – Harvey Haddix //
Talent aside, When you are on you are on.. I guess no other answer!!
What ?
The World Series almost runs into the WINTER now ! Into November again this year. One of these years they are going to be whited out by a blizzard. lol
This day in age..
They would have removed him from the ball game after the 9th or 10th and brought in a “lefty specialist” or a “set up man”.. LOL
You're probably right.
(By the way, I neglected to mention anywhere above that the real anniversary is tomorrow, the 26th of May.)
Boy, I will never forget that night in May of 1959.
What a night!
You're probably right.
(By the way, I neglected to mention anywhere above that the real anniversary is tomorrow, the 26th of May.)
Boy, I will never forget that night in May of 1959.
What a night!
...... by the way, Harvey Haddix was from Medway, near Springfield, Ohio.
How old were you then ?
Right.
And I think I can tell you from some very serious baseball playing in my past ....... that Harvey's cold may have strangely helped him get into that "zone" he was in. He was a great artist on the mound, he could paint the corners, but he was pretty sick that day and night. I have found over the years that many athletes do miraculously excellent things when they are under the weather.
12
The Kitten was a great pitcher. People look at the 1960 world series and think that the Pirates were so overmatched by the Yankees. However, the Pirates had a really good pitching staff with the likes of Haddix, Vernon Law, Bob Friend and Elroy Face. And they had one of the great defensive infields with Mazeroski and Dick Groat. Groat was also an all American basketball player at Duke. He still announces Pittsburgh Panthers basketball games with Bill Hillgrove on the radio.
I know that some of the greatest things Michael Jordan ever did on a basketball court were done when he was as sick as a dog.
Bookmark for later.
I remember old Dock well. We used to do some partying together back in the 70's.... but mostly I was a fan of his He was a real good guy. Sickness or LSD ....... it's real easy to get into that "zone".
I played a couple of times on LSD back in the 70's (semi-pro at the time). I was an outfielder. Of course you probably know that LSD and a number of other drugs make your optical nerve fire more often. Obviously this could help a hitter see the spin on the ball ..... but it is also dangerous (watching a curve ball lefty/lefty or righty/righty could be dangerous if you were too overtaken by the trajectory)-- ugh.
Playing out in the outfield was really no fun at all on acid --- too much going on in the head. I stopped doing it pretty quickly. But, it was an experience.
lol
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