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| Kansas City Athletics pitcher Bobby Shantz, in the throes of a downward spiral in his career three years after winning the American League MVP award, rose up to pitch a three-hit shutout of the New York Yankees on April 29, 1955 in a 6-0 victory. Shantz had a 13.50 ERA coming into the game. |
By Phil Ellenbecker
He'd been the American League MVP three years before with the Philadelphia Athletics, possessing a sharp overhand curveball. But when 29-year-old Bobby Shantz took the mound for the Kansas City Athletics on April 29, 1955, he was hanging by his 5-foot-6 thread.
After posting a 24-7 record with a 2.48 ERA in 1952, Shantz was hamstrung by shoulder problems and sank to 6-9 and 4.35 over the next two seasons, and 1954 had been almost a complete wash -- 1-0 and 7.08 over just two games and eight innings.
Prospects were looking even dimmer at the start of the 1955 season, even with a change of scenery with the franchise's move to Kansas City. Entering his April 29 start against the mighty New York Yankees, Shantz stood at 0-2 with a 13.50 ERA. He had given up nine runs in 1 2/3 innings in his last start six days before, in a 29-6 shellacking at the hands of the Chicago White Sox.
But perhaps it was the challenge of facing the Yankees, winner of five of the past six World Series titles. Or the presence behind the plate at catcher of brother Billy, two years his younger. Or maybe it was the crowd of 33,421 on for a Friday night at Kansas City's Municipal Stadium, which had formerly served as the home of the Yankees' top farm team, the Blues, but was now newly refurbished to accommodate major league baseball.
Whatever the case, Shantz was nothing like the embarrassment he'd been April 23, and everything like the MVP he'd been in 1952. The crafty left-hander spun a three-hit shutout as the A's blanked the Yankees 6-0.
Shantz had four innings in which he faced only three batters (with the help of one double play) and three in which faced only four. He set down nine straight batters at one point and six at another.
Only in the last two innings did the Yankees get anybody into scoring position, putting runners at first and second both times. Shantz got a ground out to end the eighth, and coaxed a double-play ball off the bat of Bob Cerv to end the game.
Shantz, whose 152 strikeouts in '52 were his career high, needed only two Ks to dispose of the Yankees this day. He retired the Yanks on 12 grounders and 11 balls in the air, two of them line drives. Shortstop Joe DeMaestri had seven assists, center fielder Bill Wilson six putouts, and future seven-time Gold Glove winner Vic Power had 13 putouts and two assists. Shantz, a future seven-time Gold Glover himself, had two assists and one putout.
The A's gave Shantz all the help he needed early and often, scoring in each of the first four innings for all of their runs and building a 4-0 lead after two.
After the Yankees' Johnny Kucks issued back-to-back walks to Power and Elmer Valo leading off the bottom of the first, Guz Zernial put the A's in front by singling in Power. Wilson followed with another RBI single.
Power tripled in Bobby Shantz and Valo singled in Power to open up the 4-0 lead in the second. Billy Shantz had started the inning with a single, and Bobby replaced him on the bases when he hit into a fielder's choice.
Rookie Tom Sturvidant, who'd pitched for the Blues the year before, relieved Kucks to start the third, and Wilson homered off him with one out. Wilson, who in 1955 would be wrapping up his five-year major league career, finished the day 2-for-4 with two RBIs.
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| Bill Wilson went 2-for-4 with two RBIs to lead the offense behind Bobby Shantz in the Kansas City Athletics' 6-0 win over the New York Yankees on April 29, 1955. Wilson also had six putouts in center field. |
The A's then added their final run in the fourth with lots of help from the strike-challenged Sturvidant. He walked Bobby Shantz, Power and Valo to load the bases with one out, and Zernial got his second RBI by drawing walk to plate Shantz with his second run scored.
Kansas City got only two hits the rest of the way, including one from Bobby Shantz himself. But himself didn't need it, as he was breezing along toward what would be his only shutout of the season. It didn't really that he issued four walks, a bit uncharacteristic for a guy who three times was in the top 10 in the AL in walks per nine innings.
It would be nice to say this day signaled a permanent return to form for Shantz, but that wasn't exactly the case. He finished the year 5-10 with a 4.54 ERA and slipped to 2-7 and 4.35 in 1956.
It would take a trade to the Yankees to give him new life as a reliever in 1957. He went on to pitch through 1964 and had a final 16-year ledger of 119-99 with a 3.38 ERA and 48 saves, including two seasons of 11 saves apiece.
Shantz was nearly a hero of the 1960 World Series with the Yankees. Going into the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 7, he'd thrown four shutout relief innings and the Yanks held a 7-4 lead. But with the help of a bizarre skip on a bad-hop single by Bill Virdon that wiped out a potential double play, Pittsburgh rallied to take a 9-7 lead in a game eventually won the Pirates, 10-9, on Bill Mazeroski's' historic walk-off homer.
Shantz had a 0-0 ERA over 5 1/3 innings over three appearances coming into that eighth inning. But he also had not gone more than three all season, and was out of the game after yielding three straight singles to start the inning. But if not for that bad hop, which knocked Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek out of the game when it struck him in the Adam's apple, this game might have down as Shantz's career highlight.
As it is, his performance on April 29, 1955, has to rank up there. He had a two-hitter June 28, 1952, for his lowest total in a complete game, coming against, guess who? The Yankees. He also a three-hitter apiece in 1951 and 1952.
But considering the circumstances on 4-29-55, with his career seemingly hanging in the balance and facing the ever-potent Yankees, this might have been the most satisfying.
Bobby 'n' Billy
The pitcher-catcher-brother combination of Bobby and Billy Shantz, Pottstown, Pennsylvania natives who grew up watching the A's, didn't work so well for the most part in 1955. Billy Bobby in 12 games, during which Bobby compiled a 2-6 record with a 4.68 ERA. The only other time the two paired on a victory was May 15, when Bobby beat the Yankees 4-3 with a complete-game six hitter. Billy went 2-for-3 but neither hit figured in the .
Billy hadn't caught Bobby any in 1954, as Bobby didn't pitch after May 3. And Billy was out of the majors after 1955, until a one-game appearance with the Yankees in 1960.
'Friendly' foes
As noted before, the baseball connection between Kansas City and the New York Yankees had already been in existence with the Blues being a Yankees farm club since 1936. No less than 14 players on the Yankees 1955 roster had played for the Blues, including five who played in the April 29 game -- Sturvidant, Cerv, Hank Bauer, Mickey Mantle and Elston Howard.
But that connection began to grow unseemly as Kansas City gained major league status. To begin with, helping to engineer the sale of the team and the move was Dan Topping, a principal owner of the Yankees and a business associate of Arnold Johnson, who was buying the A's.
And once the A's were in the major leagues, the Yankees seemingly continued to treat them like a farm team. The two teams dealt players to each other throughout the 1950s. And it always seemed the Yankees got the up-and-coming players while the A's got the over-the-hill ones. The most vivid example was the Yankees obtaining future home run record-setter Roger Maris from the A's for the 1960 season. And an of the A's the retreads was Bauer going to Kansas City, in that same trade, for the final two years of a career in which he'd been a big contributor to seven world champions.
But if the Yankees profited on the field from their relationship with the A's, Kansas City profited from the connection at the box office, at least . The A's were second in the AL in attendance in their first year in K.C., behind the Yankees. And perhaps because Kansas City fans had already seen the Yankees players in the minor leagues, a good portion of that attendance came when the A's played the Yankees. The average attendance for the 11 home dates with New York in 1955 was 29,978 -- good for 22 percent of Kansas City's total of 1,393,054. By comparison, the average attendance slice for the other seven AL teams was 11 percent.
The 33,421 for the April 29 game was the second-highest gate of 1955 at Municipal for the A's, only the 33,585 for a Sunday doubleheader July 24 against, you know, the Yankees.
The A's did profit on the field in at least one notable case from a with the Yanks. On Oct. 15, 1956, the Yankees sold Bob Cerv to the A's. Two years later Cerv was fourth in MVP voting after .305 with 38 homers and 104 RBIs. The 38 homers were the most ever hit by an A's player in the 13 years they were in Kansas City, and they were the most by any K.C. player, A's or Royals, until Mike Moustakas matched it with 38 in 2017. (Jorge Soler broke the with 48 in 2019.)
And when Cerv's production dropped the next two seasons, he was traded to, who? The Yankees. At least they were getting the player on his way down this time.
Sources:
Play-by-play: https://www.
Bobby Shantz biography: https://sabr.org/
A's-Yankees relationship: https://www.
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
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