Posted on 08/19/2007 6:29:40 AM PDT by rhema
Yesterday I commented somewhat extensively on Jack Hamilton, who is considered to this day a hate object because of the tragic beaning of Boston Red Sox star Tony Conigliaro in 1967. The tragedy ruined Conigliaro’s career and may—may—have contributed long-term to his premature death. It certainly hung Hamilton with a reputation as a careless headhunter.
And he doesn’t deserve it.
The Red Sox plan to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Conigliaro beaning Saturday night, before playing the team for whom Hamilton pitched when Tony C. went down for the count, the team known then as the California Angels. It’s easy enough to understand the grief that still envelops Red Sox fans (I happen to be one) when they remember.
But analysts (actual or alleged) analyse. And if it gets me drummed out of Red Sox Nation, so be it. But Hamilton wasn’t within twenty nautical miles of the worst headhunter baseball’s ever seen. And all you have to do is check the numbers. Those pesky numbers that keep pushing facts in the way of a pleasant or at least a comforting myth. They’ll suggest strongly that beaning Conigliaro was every inch an out-of-character accident.
A man who hits only thirteen men in eight major league seasons and averages—count them—three per 162 games is not a man who ought to be on any lineup’s ten least wanted list, no matter how hard inside he pitches, no matter how deeply a fan base still loves the guy he felled so notoriously.
There are men who should have struck far worse fear into the hearts of hitters and fans alike when they took the mound. And there are men who did strike such fear but may not actually have been as dangerous as they’ve been held to be.
It only begins with Carl Mays. You know him. He’s the man whose submarine spitter coned and killed Ray Chapman in 1920, inspiring a few rules changes (such as clean balls in play at all times and the beginning of the end of the spitball’s legality) and one harrowing book, Mike Sowell’s The Pitch That Killed. Well, now. In fifteen major league seasons Mays averaged six hit batsmen per 162 games (that was how many fewer Hamilton had?) and totaled 89 for his career.
Early Wynn was famous for having said, actually or allegedly, that he’d knock his grandmother down if she dug in against him. Turns out she might have been safer digging in against her grandson than crossing the street in midtown Chicago. Wynn averaged three hit batsmen per 162 games, exactly what Hamilton averaged, and in a 23-season career Wynn hit 64 batters. He probably got the worst of his reputation in 1959, when he was helping lead the Go-Go White Sox to the pennant, and plunked nine, the most in any season of his career. That’s four less than Hamilton’s lifetime total and four more than Hamilton hit in any single season.
Don Drysdale was actually a case of the inside-pitching pupil definitely outshining the teacher. And just wait until you see the teacher’s name: Sal Maglie, with whom Drysdale got to spend one season (1956) as a Brooklyn Dodger. Sal the Barber (hint: he didn’t get his nickname because he was a dark Italian who looked like the old guy giving you your monthly haircut) averaged half the hit batsmen per 162 games (five) that Drysdale ended up averaging. (Ten.) He also retired with 44 lifetime hit batsmen in ten major league seasons.
Bob Gibson took no quarter from any batter and he has the stats to prove it, even if Drysdale he ain’t in the marksmanship department. He retired with 102 lifetime drills and an average of six per 162 games, his top trophy seasons being thirteen in 1963, eleven in 1965, and ten each in 1962 and 1969.
And, come to think of it, Hoot, the Barber, the Submariner, and Grandma’s Little Headhunter weren’t even close to the worst of the group. Of all the pitchers mentioned by name thus far, only Drysdale turns up among the top twenty marksmen of all time. Remember all those clips of Big D knocking or drilling Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson, two men who were at least as notorious for crowding the plate as Tony C. actually was?
Jack Hamilton retired with only three more hit batsmen lifetime than Don Drysdale averaged per 162 games. Drysdale also retired with 141 more plunks for a career lasting six more seasons than Hamilton’s lasted. And here’s another shock: there are twelve ahead of and seven behind Drysdale on the all-time drill call.
Here come the top twenty, with their lifetime plunks, and if you line up the lengths of their careers you may see some weren’t quite as deadly as their numbers suggest while some might have been even deadlier. Their plunks per 162 games are in parentheses. I guarantee that there’s one name on the list whom you might have expected to place in the top ten at minimum but didn’t (though he still has the rest of this season at least to move into a tie at least for number ten). And there are two names that may give you a heart attack and stroke at once when you see them on the list at all . . . at first:
Walter Johnson: 203 (9).
Eddie Plunk . . . er, Plank: 196 (11).
Randy Johnson: 182 (11).
Joe McGinnity: 182 (14).
Chick Fraser: 177 (14).
Charlie Hough (Charlie Hough?!?): 174 (9).
Cy Young: 163 (6).
Jim Bunning: 160 (9).
Nolan Ryan: 158 (6).
Vic Willis: 157 (10).
Roger Clemens: 156 (7).
Bert Blyleven: 155 (7).
Don Drysdale: 154 (10).
Tim Wakefield (see Charlie Hough): 150 (11).
Kevin Brown: 139 (5).
Howard Ehmke: 137 (12).
Kid Nichols: 133 (7).
Ed Doheny: 132 (25).
George Mullin: 131 (9).
Greg Maddux: 130 (6).
Read the foregoing very carefully. Then tell me how a man who pitched eight major league seasons and hit only thirteen in his career becomes the most evil human being who ever stepped onto a major league mound, while a man nearly forgotten but who hit 132 men in nine major league seasons and averaged 25 victims per 162 games gets a comparative pass.
I submit further that based on the numbers two knuckleball pitchers who averaged nine and eleven plunks, respectively, per 162 games could be considered more dangerous than the man who drilled Tony C. (Never mind for now that the knuckleball by its very nature might tend to sail in a bit and kiss a hitter softly depending on the atmospheric conditions.)
Just in case your curiosity has the better of you, Bob Gibson didn’t even make the top fifty; he’s tied (with Chief Bender and Clark Griffith) for number 58. Carl Mays, that murderer, sits alone at number 87. Early Wynn and Sal Maglie didn’t even crack the top 150. Wynn is tied at number 187—with Red Ames, Ray Caldwell, Tom Glavine, Danny MacFayden, Jeff Nelson, and Ron Villone.
And whence the Demon Barber of Coogan’s Bluff? Sal Maglie’s tied at number 448—with Bill (Won’t You Come Home?) Bailey, Ewell (The Whip) Blackwell, Shawn Boskie, David Bush, Reggie Cleveland, Dock Ellis, Bill Hill, Willis Hudlin, Rick Reed, Allen Russell, Ray Scarborough, Mel Stottlemyre, Bill Travers, George Winter, and Rick Wise.
baseball-reference.com’s list of the career cone leaders shows no further down than men with 27 lifetime lances. But you might care to note that among the men who finished with a mere 27 were Dizzy Dean, Bill (Spaceman) Lee, Jeff Reardon, Schoolboy Rowe, Johan Santana (pending his next start, anyway), Ernie Shore (the man from whom a rule change stole a perfect game he consummated when he relieved Babe Ruth with none out and a man on first in the opening frame, after Ruth got tossed for arguing), Tim Worrell, and Al Worthington.
But because he threw one that ran in and caught a matinee idol on the cranium in the heat of a pennant race, never mind that said matinee idol was leaning over the plate as was his own habit, having gotten himself drilled five times a seaon over his first four major league seasons up to and including 18 August 1967, Jack Hamilton is considered to have been close enough to Carl Mays’s successor as a baseball murderer.
It’s time to put that to rest once and for all time. The resting could begin with Billy Conigliaro, who’s held for years without a shred of evidence that Hamilton was out to bag his brother. What happened to Tony Conigliaro was a sickening tragedy and an unintended, accidental one at that. It does Tony C.’s memory and Red Sox Nation no good to suggest or to believe otherwise.
We’re talking beaning. The stats are for hit batsmen. In other words, the stats in the article tell us nothing about beaning.
Piazza’s beaning was the lowest of the low.
further proof that Red Sox fanhood, like liberal party affiliation, is something of a symptom of a greater sickness.
I was at the game and saw the tribute. Several of the 1967 Boston Red Sox “Impossible Dream Team” were on hand. Sixty-seven was the year before the American League Championship Series started in ‘68. In those days, if you climbed to the top of the 8 team league through the grueling 162 game season, you went to the World Series. The Sox had finished next to last in ‘66. Even without Conigliaro, the Sox won the ‘67 pennant on the last day of the season. I only wish Jack Hamilton—if he is still alive— had been in attendance last night. He would have received some boos but mostly the very friendly crowd would have applauded him for the class act of showing up. I wonder if Sox management invited him.
Tony Conigliaro was a local boy from the hard working town of Revere. He was a regular guy who became the youngest player in baseball history to reach 100 homers. He would have made the Hall of Fame no doubt without the lasting effects of the beaning. There is no question it shortened his career. I’ll never forget the tabloid photograph of Tony C.’s remarkably ugly shiner, covering the entire front page of The Boston Herald on the day after it happened.
The Sox won last night’s game in spectacular come-from-behind fashion with heroics from David Ortiz. If the Sox get to the Series this year, Red Sox fans will remember last night’s game as a game for the ages with Big Papi’s Grand Slam off of Weaver in the fifth inning. It was a great night for Sox fans and a fine tribute to Tony C. I feel sorry for folks who don’t know the fun and majesty of baseball.
One further note: The announcer made a point of mentioning that Billy Conigliaro “couldn’t be here tonight” when other members of Tony C.’s family were introduced. A reason why Billy didn’t show up was not given.
It's a fine line. Pitchers have to protect the inside half of the strike zone. Batters in the 90s really seems to start leaning over and diving into the plate. Piazza shoulda ducked. He was such a metrosexual about the whole thing. He got owned. Twice.
Piazza got hit because he had the nerve to hit one of Roger’s pitches for a HR. Roger threw a broken bat at him the next year. When Piazza got nailed in the head Jeter or Bernie Williams should have taken one in return from someone who threw 95. That would have sent a message to the Yankee clubhouse that Roger’s teammates would pay the bill for his punk ass crap.
Just goes to show that though baseball is a game of statistics, it’s the way we fans feel about those statistics that gets remembered. Baseball fans never forget and we never forgive. Just ask Barry Bonds.
That’s why we love to hate the Yankees. They’re so damn arrogant. I’m glad there were no reprisals that year. Let their actions stand alone. Mike Piazza is probably the most loved MLB player in two decades. Clemens just immortalized the reputations of both Piazza and the Yankees. Unforgettable moment. God, I love this game!
Yep... you want to throw a message pitch, throw it at a batter’s ass. You want to injure someone or maybe end his career, throw it towards his head (or behind it). Clemens is and always has been a punk.
Derek Jeter’s a good ballplayer...I would hate to see him take one in the earhole because of Clemens....but that’s baseball
Talk about a wild lefty. In 1899 he plunked better than one batter every nine innings, 37 in all!
He must have learned some lessons, though. His last two years in the majors (when he plunked only 15 and 19 batters, respectively) saw him posting lifetime-best records of 16-4 and 16-8. Wonder why he hung it up at that point.
Pitching for a powerhouse team probably didn't hurt. In 1902, his Pirate pitching teammates had records like 28-6 (Jack Chesbro), 20-9, 15-7, and 20-6, and the team went 103-36. In '03, they were 91-49.
You are right that the Mets should have protected their guy. They failed to do so. And they lost the series in the process.
Since pitchers don’t pitch every game I don’t think 162 games should be used as a basis for the statistics.
I refuse to believe that a guy with his K/BB ratio cannot control his pitches when he wants to. If he cannot then messing with a guy’s livelihood or even life is beyond bush. Roger was always too much of a bitch to tip his cap at a guy who hit his best pitch.
Throw an off-speed pitch? Scare him with the old changeup? I don't think so. It's a man's game, and Piazza should know that. Now he does.
What does “Manning Up” have to do with this? Batter stands in box, pitcher throws over the plate. Batter’s job to get on base and pitcher’s job to make outs. Should the batter throw his bat out at the pitcher when he decides the pitcher is too comfortable throwing the ball? There is absolutly no excuse for throwing at a guy’s head. None. If Clemens isn’t good enough to get the guy out with his best stuff then sit down and let someone else do the job. But no, can’t hit The Texas Con Man’s pitches. That’s not right. Roger wouldn’t have pulled that stuff in the NL because he would have gotten hit and he didn’t have the stones to be accountable.
It takes a man with no guts to stand there and throw at a guy’s head. Put some gas behind it and a batter has no chance to get out of the way.
Incorrect on both counts. Batters regularly cheat and stand partially outside the box. Since the 90s, leaning over the plate has become trendy. This way, they try to take away the inside half by crowding it out, hoping the pitcher won't have the guts to challenge them on it. It also lets them get better wood on the outside pitch. That way, they get better arm extention and more power. IMO, this has led to more opposite field homers (see Frank Thomas, Manny Ramirez, and Mike Piazza). Second, pitchers are not required to throw over the plate. That's nonsense. They definitely throw off the plate, both inside and outside, as part of their strategy. A pitcher who ONLY throws strikes will get pounded. Batter’s job to get on base and pitcher’s job to make outs.
Wrong again. A batter's job isn't always to get on base. Sometimes his job is to protect a runner on the go. Sometimes it's to make the pitcher throw a lot of pitches. Sometimes just putting the ball in play will do. Depends on the situation.
Should the batter throw his bat out at the pitcher when he decides the pitcher is too comfortable throwing the ball?
I'm pretty sure throwing the bat is illegal, whereas throwing high and tight is not.
There is absolutly no excuse for throwing at a guy’s head. None.
Once again, incorrect. A batter can't put his head/body anywhere he wants. If he's crowding the plate, that's his problem. One dirt sandwich ought to correct the problem.
If Clemens isn’t good enough to get the guy out with his best stuff then sit down and let someone else do the job
Yep. That's Clemens' problem. He's not good enough. LOL. Neither was Bob Gibson. He was another hack. LOL
Pleeeze! Don’t confuse me with the facts!
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