8-12-66: Shamsky's clutch-homer show falls shy

Art Shamsky came off the bench to hit homers in three straight at-bats for the Cincinnati Reds on Aug. 12, 1966. The first homer put the Reds ahead, and the next two tied the game in extra innings. But it wasn't enough as the Pittsburgh Pirates prevailed 14-11 at Crosley Field in a game that featured 11 homers, eight lead changes and seven ties.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  Art Shamsky is a fondly remembered member of the 1969 Amazin' Mets. Enough so that the character Robert on the TV series "Everybody Loves Raymond" named his dog Shamsky.

  After hitting a career-high .300 in 1969 with 14 homers and 47 RBIs during the regular season, he went on to hit .538 and lead both teams in hits with seven as the New York Mets swept the Atlanta Braves in the first-ever National League Championship Series.

  “I’ll walk down the street in New York now and people will say, ‘There’s Art Shamsky of the Mets.’ People used to laugh. They won’t anymore," Shamky told the New York Daily News after his NLCS performance, as quoted in his Society for American Baseball Research biography.

  He wasn't a factor in the Mets' 4-1 triumph over Baltimore in the World Series, going 0-for-6, but nevertheless his status among Mets fans was cemented, particularly among the area’s large Jewish population.

  But as amazin' as the 1969 Mets and Shamsky were, what was really amazin' about Shamsky's career was what he did while with the Cincinnati Reds against the Pittsburgh Pirates on the Friday night of Aug. 12, 1966, at age 24 and in his second season in the major leagues.

  What he did was come off the bench and homer in three straight at-bats, the first putting the Reds ahead, the next two tying the game in extra innings.

  Alas, the Reds couldn't get him up one more time. He was two batters away when Leo Cardenas grounded into a double play, giving the Pirates a chaotic 14-11 victory in 13 innings before a Shrine Night crowd of 25,477 at Cincinnati's Crosley Field.

  Teammate Pete Rose told Earl Lawson of the Cincinnati Post Shamsky's power display was “one of the greatest clutch-hitting exhibitions ever seen.”

  And Shamsky wasn't through. He didn't play in the next day's game against Pittsburgh, but he came off the bench and homered for a fourth straight time Sunday. His homers in four consecutive at-bats ties him with several others for the major league record.

  "I can’t say I tried to hit any of them. … It’s a funny thing. They come pretty easy when I don’t try," Shamsky told Jack Disney of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner after the conclusion of his streak.

  Getting back to Friday, how chaotic was it on Shrine Night, how frenzied before the fezzes? The game, which lasted 4 hours, 22 minutes, included eight lead changes and seven ties. The two teams combined for 11 homers, accounting for 17 of the runs scored. Each team used 20 players. The Pirates used six pitchers, Cincy five. They issued a combined 17 walks, four of them intentional as the constant flow of base runners brought on the need for tit-for-tat tactics. There was enough shuffling going on that two of the Hall of Famers in the game, Willie Stargell and Tony Perez, were each pinch hit for.

  (It should be noted that Perez didn't really emerge until a 26-homer season in 1967. And Stargell, even though he hit 33 homers in '66, also hit only .169 this year against left-handers and was set to face southpaw Billy McCool.)

 "Those who played and witnessed this contest repeated over and over, ‘Doggonedest’ game I ever saw,' " reported Lester J. Biederman in The Sporting News, as quoted in an article by Russell Lake for the SABR's Games Project.

All-time great pinch hitter Manny Mota, shown in his days with the Los Angeles Dodgers, came off the bench and put the Pittsburgh Pirates ahead for good with a two-run 13th inning single in a 14-11 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Aug. 12, 1966.

 It was Stargell's replacement, Manny Mota, who provided the telling blow by bouncing a two-run single to left field off McCool that put the Pirates ahead 13-11 in the top of the 13th inning, scoring Matty Alou and Bob Bailey. Roberto Clemente, the most renowned of the Pirates' three Hall of Famers in the lineup, scored on a wild pitch by Jack Baldschun to make it 14-11.

  Chico Ruiz batted for Baldschun leading off the Cincinnati 13th and singled. But Tommy Sisk, the last of Pittsburgh's six pitchers, brought a halt to the Crosley craziness. First he struck out Tommy Helms looking. Then he got Cardenas to hit a hard grounder to second baseman Bill Mazeroski, who snatched it and started a 4-6-3 double play with shortstop Jose Pagan to end the game.

  It was somewhat appropriate and at the same time ironic that the slugfest should end with Mazeroski, who was elected to the Hall of Fame largely on his defense, turning a twin killing. The eight-time Gold Glove winner would lead the league's second baseman in double plays turned this season and is the all-time leader in that category after leading the league eight times.

  But before Mota and Mazeroski came along, it was mainly a home-run derby, led by Shamsky. His two-run homer in the eighth inning gave the Reds an 8-7 lead. His solo shot in the 10th tied it at 9. Another two-run blow made it 11-11 in the 11th. The last was Shamsky's 15th homer en route to a career-high 21.

 By going 3-for-3 with three runs scored and five RBIs, he set career highs for homers, runs and RBIs in a game.

Bob Bailey went 3-for-7 with two homers, five RBIs and three runs scored to help the Pittsburgh Pirates topple the Cincinnati Reds 14-11 in 13 innings on Aug. 12, 1966.

 Right up there in the slugging department was the Pirates' Bailey, who belted two homers and finished the day 3-for-7 with three runs and five RBIs. He hit his eighth and ninth homers on the year in the sixth and seventh innings after striking out his first two times up.

 Three of the Hall of Famers also weighed in with circuit clouts. Stargell had a solo homer in the 10th, his 27th of the year, to put Pittsburgh ahead 9-8. Clemente had a solo shot in the third. It was the 20th of a career-high 29 the eventual National League MVP hit in 1966.

 And all-time hits leader Pete Rose had a two-run blast for the Reds in the fifth inning, part of a 2-for-4 day that also included three walks, two of them intentional. This was also a career homer year for Rose, not known for his power. It was his 12th dinger in a season he'd hit 16, tying his best.

 Also homering for the Pirates were former Red Jesse Gonder, with one on in the third, and Jerry Lynch, also a former Red, with a solo shot in the ninth. Deron Johnson had a two-run homer for the Reds in the first. (That kept Johnson from an ignominious collar on the day, as he went hitless from there and finished 1-for-7.)

  Lynch's homer was part of a big day for all-time great pinch hitters for the Pirates. He tied the game at 8 in the top of the ninth with one of his record 18 pinch homers. (He also has the record for pinch homers in a season with five, set with Cincinnati in 1961.) And although Mota's go-ahead single in the 13th was his second time up so it doesn't count as a pinch hit, it was certainly pinch-like, and he ranks third all time in pinch hits with 150. He was the career leader until Lenny Harris passed him in 2001. (Harris finished with 212.)  

  Sisk got the win and moved to 6-2, throwing two scoreless innings and allowing one hit. McCool was tagged with the loss and moved to 7-7. He gave up four hits and five runs, four earned, while walking six -- two of them intentional passes to Clemente.

   After Lynch knotted the score, Roy Face came on in relief for the Pirates and extended the game into extra innings by striking out the side. Stargell and Shamsky matched homers in the 10th, and then the Reds nearly ended it by loading the bases on walks to Tommy Harper and Rose (intentionally) around a single by Vada Pinson, who went 3-for-7 on the day.

  But with one out, Face kept the game tied by retiring Johnson on a fly out and striking out Mel Queen. Queen, normally a pitcher, batted for Don Nottebart, Cincinnati's third pitcher on the day.

  McCool then came on to start the 11th and surrendered a two-run double to Bailey, who came close to a third homer by reaching the wall in left-center. Mota ended Pittsburgh's turn by grounding into a fielder's choice batting for Stargell.

  Shamsky kept it alive by homering off Billy O'Dell, who'd just relieved Face, with two out in the bottom of the 11th with Johnny Edwards aboard. Shamsky sent a 3-1 pitch off the right-field foul pole screen.

  The Pirates put runners at second and third with two out in the 12th, but McCool got out of the jam by striking out Jim Pagliaroni looking. Sisk retired the Reds 1-2-3 in the bottom half.

  Matty Alou, capping a 3-for-5 day, singled leading off the top half of the 13th. Bailey reached second and Alou third when Helms botched a would-be double play grounder down the third-base line for an error. Clemente was walked intentionally. Mota followed with his decisive two-run hit, putting a damper on Shamsky's heroics. After the game, he declined an opportunity to go on a Cincinnati postgame radio show, Star of the Game. “How can you be a star when your team loses?”  Shamsky said, according to Si Burick in the Dayton Daily News.

Most improbable

  Win probability added (WPA) is a statistic that attempts to measure a player's contribution to a win by figuring the factor by which each specific play made by that player has altered the outcome of a game.

  According to a list at baseballreference.com that takes in games from 1916 through 2013, Shamsky's WPA for the night of Aug. 12, 1966, was the highest ever recorded. What this means, as explained in a Baseball Prospectus article by Michael Baumann, is that in that game Shamsky did more than anyone before or since to help his team win.

  That's impressive enough, but what makes it more impressive, or improbable shall we say, is that as Baumaann notes, the players with the highest WPAs in history are typically really good players, they started the game and they played on the winning team. 

   Shamsky strikes out on all three counts.

 "That’s when Shamsky’s performance on August 12, 1966, stops being laudable and historically interesting and starts being truly bizarre," Baumann writes.

And he wasn't done

 After sitting out the Pirates' rain-shortened 11-0 victory over the Pirates the next day, Shamsky hit his fourth consecutive home run Sunday with a pinch-hit two-run shot during the seventh inning of a 4-2 Pirate win. In his next at-bat, the next night in Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium, he settled for a single in the eighth inning.

 The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner ran a parody of “Casey at the Bat” that concluded, “But there is no joy in any town — just tears and sadness mingled; After four straight homers, mighty Shamsky only singled."

  Shamsky finally earned a start in right field the next night, but went 0-for-3 to snap his 5-for-5 streak.

  As noted at the top, Shamsky's four homers in four consecutive at-bats  ties him for the major league record. He is one of 17 players to hit four straight homers over a span of two games and the only major leaguer to hit three home runs in a game without being in the starting lineup.

  Shamsky went on to play eight years in the major leagues and had a .253 lifetime batting average with 68 homers and 233 RBIs.

Sources:

Play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1966/B08120CIN1966.htm and  https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-12-1966-art-shamsky-socks-three-consecutive-homers-reds-pirates-combine-11

Shamsky biography:  https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/68fc8356  

Win probability added: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/20816/baseball-proguestus-chasing-after-the-wind-win-probability-added-art-shamsky-and-the-oppressive-weirdness-of-baseball/ 

Pinch hitting records: https://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/pinch-hitters-records.shtml

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.