By Phil Ellenbecker
Previous and future stories in this series cover the triumphs of the 1959 Chicago White Sox. Triumphs on the baseball field, over opposing teams. This game deals with a loss on the field, to an opposing team. But this one's too hard to resist.
For one thing, it does represent a triumph — not over an opposing team, but on the field, over a force of nature.
For another, it involves one of the most irrepressible, colorful owners in the history of baseball, if not the most, and if not the best owner in the history of baseball.
On June 2, 1959, in a game won by the Baltimore Orioles 3-2 before 12,482 fans at Comiskey Park, White Sox owner Bill Veeck beat the gnats. And in typical fashion, with fireworks. Veeck always liked to put on a good show, with midgets as actual players and dressed up as Martians, and with exploding scoreboards, with grandstand managers and various other off-the-wall ideas. And in this case he put the show to a practical purpose.
According to a story by Michael Clair at the MLB Cut 4 section of mlb.com, taken from the Associated Press account of the game, three batters into the June 2 game at Comiskey Park, Orioles pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm was swarmed by a cloud of gnats. The game was stopped for 16 minutes in an attempt to clear the field of the pests, with the snapping and waving of a towel by an Orioles coach, insect repellent, bug bombs, lit pieces of paper.
"There was a cloud of gnats over the mound so thick that they were flying in my mouth," Wilhelm said. "I never should have pitched a ball until they cleared away."
When all else failed, Veeck decided to bring out the heavy ammo — in the form of fireworks he'd planned to set off after the game. "Veeck had a fireworks bomb placed on the mound," the AP reported. "The explosion was deafening, the white smoke suffocating.
'The gnats gave up."
But Wilhelm was apparently a little shook up. He'd already walked Nellie Fox and was at 2-0 on Earl Torgeson when the gnats intervened. After they'd left, Wilhelm walked Torgeson, hit Sherm Lollar with a pitch and surrendered his first run in 22 1/3 innings when Fox scored on Larry Doby's fielder's choice grounder.
"I was so gooed up with ointment and stuff," Wilhelm said, referring to the insecticide. "I had to keep using resin and dirt on my hands to keep from losing the ball."
But "Old Sarge" settled down after that and allowed only one run the rest of the way in running his record to 8-0. Wilhelm -- the future Hall of Famer and 21-year major leaguer who'd held the record for games pitched before being eventually passed by five latter-day relievers -- finished his only year as a regular starter with a 15-10 record and an American League-leading 2.19 ERA.
The Orioles, on the cusp of becoming an AL contender with second- and third-place finishes the next two years, moved within a half-game of Cleveland for first with their win over the White Sox on June 2, but they eventually faded to sixth with a final record of 74-80.
The White Sox, meanwhile, were one game out of first after the loss in a tight race that had all eight teams within six games of the top. Two days later the "Go Go Sox" were in first place; they stayed between two games down and one game up until July 28, took first for good that day, and wound up with their first pennant in 40 years with a final record of 94-60.
As for the gnats, Veeck, never at a loss for words and never one to take himself too seriously, had the appropriate perspective:
"Since I probably will be accused of having something to do with those bugs, I might as well say now I have them in a bottle and have been training them for several years for just such an occasion."
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