Swoonin' A's, 1962: Granny takes the hill

Granny Hamner pitches in spring training while Philadelphia Phillies manager Mayo Smith looks on in the late 1950s. Hamner was trying to revive his career on the mound after being a mainstay at shortstop for the Phillies most of the decade. Hamner pitched in three games for the Kansas City Athletics in 1962 after being out of the major leagues for three years.   

By Phil Ellenbecker

  How desperate were the Kansas City Athletics by 1962?

  Well, they were willing to give a former "Whiz Kid" whose whizzing days at shortstop were way behind him a chance at pitching for a spell that season.

  Granville "Granny" Hamner -- he despised "Granny," according to his Society of American Baseball Research biography (https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/9a511200) -- at age 23 played shortstop for the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies, called "The Whiz Kids" because of their youth as they captured the team's first National League pennant since 1915. He'd made his major league debut at age 17, beginning a distingushed career in which he was a three-time All-Star Game selection. During professional baseball’s 1969 centennial celebration, fans honored Hamner as the Phillies' all-time greatest shortstop. In 1964 Robert Carpenter, the Philadelphia Phillies president and owner, said, “Granny Hamner was the best clutch hitter we ever had.”

  But Hamner, whose brother Garvin had played with the Phillies in 1945, hadn't appeared in a major league game in almost three years to the day when he took the pitching mound for the A's on July 28, 1962, in the second game of a twinight doubleheader at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. The Orioles completed a sweep with a 7-1 victory after shutting out the A's 3-0 in the opener.

  Hamner's last action in the big leagues had been July 26, 1959, at third base in a game for Cleveland. Since then, he'd become a manager in the minor leagues and had taken up pitching, becoming good enough as a knuckleballer to earn a look from the A's, having gone 10-4 with an Eastern League-best 2.03 ERA so far in 1962.

  (Hamner, seeing his career as an infielder with the Phillies on the decline because of shoulder problems in the late 1950s, had already dabbled in pitching at that time, with four games on the mound in 1956 and '57).

  He handled himself well in this initial outing with the A's. Summoned in relief of former Oriole Jerry Walker to start the sixth inning, with Baltimore leading 3-0, Hamner allowed no runs on one hit with two walks over two innings. He worked around a walk in the sixth, and a single by Jerry Adair and a walk in the seventh, retiring the Orioles on three ground balls and three pop-ups.

  Hamner's turn at bat came up in the eighth, and manager Hank Bauer pinch hit for him with Wayne Causey. A's relief ace John Wyatt came on in the bottom of the eighth and gave up four runs, and that was pretty much the ballgame.

  (Causey, the man who hit for Hamner, had a .252 batting average that year and .252 lifetime, while Granny hit .262 in his 17 years. Of course, he hadn't swung a bat in a major league game in three years on this day.)

  Hamner’s next time out of the bullpen didn’t go so well. In fact, it was a disaster, and this time it was critical, or at least as critical as the A’s could get. Coming on four days later to replace Danny McDevitt with two out and two on in the ninth inning of the first game of a doubleheader, Hamner faced four batters and didn’t retire a one, while throwing a wild pitch. The Tigers pushed across the tying and winning runs, saddling Granny with the loss. His line for the game: zero innings, two hits, one earned run, two walks.

  He was back out again in the nightcap Aug. 1 -- Bauer hanging him out to dry -- and didn’t fare any better, giving up five runs, three earned, seven hits and two walks in the final two innings as Detroit won 9-1.

  And that was it for Granny’s comeback. His 1962 totals: 0-1, 9.00 ERA, 10 hits and six runs allowed, four earned, over three games and four innings, with six walks and no strikeouts.

 "Within a week Hamner again abandoned his pitching pursuits and retired as an active player," David E. Skelton wrote in his SABR biography of Hamner.

Dick Hall shut out the Kansas City Athletics on six hits and struck out a career-high 12 in the Baltimore Orioles' 7-0 victory in the second game of a doubleheader July 28, 1962 in Baltimore.

Over-Halled

  About the only other thing noteworthy in the second game July 28 besides Hamner's appearance, in a twin bill between two teams headed nowhere, was a dominating pitching performance by Baltimore's Dick Hall in his first start of the season. He struck out a career-high 12 batters while walking none and allowing six hits. A control artist, Hall had finished third in the AL in walks per nine innings pitched in 1960 at 1.9 and would have ranked higher in other years if he'd have met qualifying standards.

  Hall had a shutout until former Southwest Missouri State basketball teammates Jerry Lumpe and Norm Siebern, who'd also both come to the A's from the New York Yankees in separate deals, combined to spoil it. Lumpe doubled with two out in the ninth inning, and Siebern followed with a single.

  (Speaking of basketball, Hall stood 6-foot-6 and was a two-time all-conference selection on the hardwood at Swarthmore College. He started his baseball career as a position player, including some time at second base, and was surely one of the tallest players ever at that position).

  Hall improved to 4-2 while lowering his ERA to 2.05. He finished the season 6-6, 2.28, in 43 games, six of them starts. He walked 19 batters in 118 innings -- 1.4 per nine innings.

  Ironically, Hall had come to the Orioles from Kansas City with Dick Williams in a trade that sent Walker and Chuck Essegian to the A's. Walker saw his record fall to 8-8 this day, allowing five hits and three runs, two earned, with six walks in five innings.

  Walker, who'd been part of the Orioles' "Kiddie Corps" of pitchers developed in the 1950s and had gone 11-10 with a 2.92 ERA in 1959, was in his second season with K.C. and on a downward slide in his career. He was 8-9 with a 5.90 ERA in 1962 and out of the majors after 1964 with a final ledger of 37-44, 4.36.

  But it was Wyatt, an overall bright spot for the A's during this time, who had the most damage done to his ERA this game after giving up his four runs without retiring a batter, capped by a three-run homer by Jim Gentile.

  Wyatt was two years away from setting a major league record for appearances in a season with 81. He was in the top 10 six times in the AL in appearances in the decade and five times in saves.

  Gentile's homer was his 26th of the year. He'd finish with 33, fifth in the league, with 87 RBIs. The year before he'd hit 46 homers, third in the AL behind Roger Maris' record-setting 61 and Mickey Mantle's 54. He'd led the league in RBIs with 141. He joined the A's in 1964.

  Other big bats in the game for the Orioles were Adair, 3-for-5, and Jackie Brandt, 2-for-5 with three RBIs. No A's players had more than one hit.

  K.C. was 44-49 after getting swept, ninth in the 10-team American League, 18 1/2 games behind the first-place New York Yankees. Baltimore improved to 53-50, in fourth and 9 1/2 back.

  The Orioles, who'd finished third the year before with a 95-67 record, slid to seventh by the end of 1962 at 77-85, 19 behind the pennant-winning Yankees. But they were back up to fourth the next year, third the next two and in 1966 captured the first pennant and World Series title for Baltimore.

  The A's finished 1962 at 72-90, still in ninth place, 24 games back. That was their most wins in four years and their fourth-highest in the 13 years they were in Kansas City between 1955 and 1967.

  Still, pretty much another humdrum year for the A's, enlivened perhaps a bit by the appearance of one Granville "Granny" Hamner on the pitching mound for a three-game stint.

Sources:

Play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B07282BAL1962.htm 

Hamner biography: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/9a511200
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.