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| Vic Power led off and finished the game with home runs to give the Kansas City Athletics a 3-2, 10-inning victory over Baltimore on May 7, 1957. |
By Phil Ellenbecker
Vic Power, among other , is as the in to in the same . He did it Aug. 14, 1958, while with the Cleveland Indians.
Not only he did he , his second steal won the , so it was a walk-off, or "run-off," steal, Cleveland a 10-9 over Cleveland.
What is not so well-known, or at I didn't it until I it on Facebook, was that Power was the first to lead off the with a and it with a walk-off . He the May 7, 1957, the Kansas City Athletics a 3-2 in 10 over the Baltimore Orioles at Kansas City's Municipal Stadium.
While the leadoff-endgame has been since, it's only been four , while 10 had in the same before .
of which you may is more , it's fitting that Power could do both, because he was a very . In he was a and of the few for A's to about in the 's first few years in Kansas City after they from Philadelphia.
And , an American League All-Star the previous two years, the 13,159 on that Tuesday night in 1957, opening and closing with a . He Hal Brown with a the of the first .
And then, after the had into a 's to it into , with off Brown with one out in the 10th. The were Power's first two in a where he'd 14, in a where in the .
Tito Francona, father of future Boston and Cleveland Terry Francona, homered off Kansas City starter Ryne Duren with one out in the sixth to give Baltimore a 2-1 lead.
Harry Simpson tied it for the A's when he doubled in Billy Hunter with two out in the eighth. Hunter was running for Bob Cerv, who'd singled before Simpson came up.
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| Virgil "Fire" Trucks threw three innings of perfect relief to finish the Kansas City Athletics' 3-2 win over Baltimore in 10 innings on May 7, 1957. |
, A's manager Lou Boudreau had pinch hit for Duren in the seventh, bringing on Virgil Trucks. And "Fire" slammed the door on the O's, retiring them in order in each of the final three innings. He began and ended his stint with his only two strikeouts, fanning cleanup hitter Bob Nieman to end the top of the 10th.
That brought up the No. 9 hitter for K.C. And it was not the pitcher's spot, as Boudreau had his pitchers bat eighth in this game as he did in each of Kansas City's first 56 games of the .
So stepping up to the was shortstop Joe DeMaestri, who struck out. Then Power struck the finishing blow.
, who 10 times earlier in his career had ranked in the top 10 in AL in strikeouts but was now mainly a reliever, improved to 4-0 with his outing. He was 9-7 with a 3.03 ERA at the end of the year.
Brown dropped to 1-1 with a final line of nine hits and three runs allowed, all earned, with two walks and four strikeouts in his 9 1/3 .
Duren, a spot starter before he became a flame-throwing and fear-inducing relief specialist with his trade to the New York Yankees next season, allowed four hits and two runs, both earned. He walked seven and struck out six in his seven-inning stint. The walks were a high but not uncharacteristic for a pitcher who became for his wildness on and off the field, and would from time to time throw his first warm-up pitch to the screen.
After had given Kansas City the early lead, Brown gave himself a tie game with a sacrifice fly to center that scored Dick Williams in the second. Williams had walked and went to second on Willie Miranda's single.
2nd Boudreau shift
The Kansas City A's manager became known while managing the Indians for the "Boudreau Shift," or "Williams Shift," which loaded the right side of his defense against Boston's Ted Williams to minimize his pull-hitting potential. While novel at the time, such deployments are in modern .
When Boudreau became Williams' with the Red Sox, he a second type of , only this one with the batting and this one to make better use of Ted's bat instead of stymieing it. of batting the pitcher in the traditional No. 9 spot, he moved him up to No. 6 through No. 8 for parts of 1952 and 1953. He did this in part because he wanted to get Williams more at-bats by hitting him second, and he wanted better hitters ahead of him the pitcher at No. 9, to put more potential runners on base ahead of him. (And he kept doing it despite the fact Williams most of 1952 and 1953 in the military, eventually fighting in the Korean War.)
Boudreau didn't have any Williams on hand when he took over the A's in 1955, but he went back to hitting his pitcher No. 8 in 1957 for the first 56 games.
A good part of that time the No. 9 hitter was DeMaestri. Of his first 33 starts, through which he was .326, he batted ninth 29 times, second the other four. He didn't bat at No. 9 the rest of the year while leveling off to .245. He was selected to the AL All-Star game, the only K.C. picked. He didn't appear in the game.
Boudreau wasn't around to bat DeMaestri or any other position player ninth after he was fired 103 into the season. The A's had a 36-67 record at the time and were in last place in the eight-team AL. They went 23-27 under Harry Craft for a final mark of 59-94, good for seventh and a one-place improvement over the year before. In 1955, in their inaugural K.C. year, Boudreau led them to a 63-91 record and sixth-place finish, their in the 13 years they spent in K.C. before moving to Oakland.
Too slick Vic?
Power was for his fielding, and in 1958 he won the first of seven straight Gold Gloves for his at first base. He wielded his mitt a matador with a cape, sweeping and swiping it to take in his infielders' throws while on the move, and adding a flare or two sometimes after pulling them in. But DeMaestri thought it may have been a little too much.
“He was an incredible athlete, but he had his own style of playing baseball, which eventually became a problem," DeMaestri told Ed Attanasio in a post for thisgreatgame.com. "Vic covered first base on the move, but it tiresome, because he was a moving target and difficult to throw to. The coaches told him about it all the time, but he could care less. The man was like talking to a brick wall. Good hitter, good runner—he had it all."
"One day it got really bad and led to a couple of errors. I’ve never done this before, but when the , I threw my mitt down in front of Lou Boudreau, our manager, and told him—you play with him because I can’t do it. Vic and I got along just great, but I knew he wasn’t going to change."
However much Power's style may have bothered DeMaestri, Joe led American League shortstops in fielding percentage in 1957 and 1958.
Power's play
After making the All-Star team his first two years in K.C., his second and third years in the big leagues, Power slumped in 1957 to a .259 batting average with 14 homers and 42 RBIs. He'd slashed .319-19-76 and .309-14-63 the previous two years. He was traded to Cleveland in a five-player trade that brought the A's Roger Maris in June 1958.
Power went on to play through 1965 and had three more .300 seasons and four more All-Star Game selections in his 12-year . His final major league totals were a .284 batting with 126 homers and 655 RBIs.
Somewhat living up to his last name, he had nine double-digit homer seasons, by his 19 in 1955. But Power's most impressive power display probably came on May 7, 1957.
Sources:
Play-by-play https://www.
Leadoff, walk-off homers in same game: https://www.baseball-
Joe DeMaestri on Vic Power: http://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
Leadoff and walk-off homers in same game
Date Player Team
5-7-57 Vic Power Kansas City Athletics
6-25-00 Darin Erstad Anaheim Angels
6-15-03 Reed Johnson Toronto Blue Jays
7-19-09 Ian Kinsler Texas Rangers
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