Not-so-magic Royals moments, 1969: Twins' Oliva 8-for-9 in twin bill

Tony Oliva raked like nobody's business for Minnesota the afternoon of June 29, 1969. He went 8-for-9 with hits in his last eight at-bats as the Twins split a doubleheader with the Kansas City Royals. He went 5-for-5 with two homers in the second game. (Ozzie Sweet, Sport magazine)

By Phil Ellenbecker
  During the Kansas City Royals' first year of existence, a fair number of all-time greats, future Hall of Famers, came through Municipal Stadium, giving Kansas City fans a look at excellence even if their own team was a little bit lacking in it.

  We're talking about players such as Frank Robinson, Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski, a few others.

  The Minnesota Twins brought in future Cooperstown enshrinees Harmon Killebrew and Rod Carew for a Sunday doubleheader June 29. And that day a player many think should be in the Hall of Fame but isn't probably gave the most Hall-worthy performance a player had at Municipal in 1969.

  We're talking Tony Oliva, who went 8-for-9 with hits in his final eight at-bats of the day as the Twins split with the Royals before 16,738 at Municipal Stadium. He went 5-for-5 with two homers, five RBIs and two runs scored as Minnesota tattooed the Royals 12-2 in the nightcap after dropping the opener 7-2. Oliva was 3-for-4 with an RBI in the first game.

  Bob Oliver and Joe Foy each went 3-for-5 and Mike Fiore had a three-run homer to lead Kansas City to its win in a 13-hit attack that propped up the home faithful in the opener.

 Oliva, a three-time American League batting champion, came within one hit of the record for a doubleheader set by nine players.

  The 5-for-5, off four different pitchers, was the last of four five-hit games Oliva had in his career. The two homers in the second game were one short of his career high for a game, as were his five RBIs. He had four six-RBI games in his career and three with five. He had 17 two-homer games, one with the three.

  Always a great all-around hitter for power and average, he put on a display across the batting spectrum in the nightcap with two homers to right field, a double to center, a single to center and a bunt single.

  Batting out of the No. 2 slot for one of only nine times on the season, Oliva laid one down for his first hit two batters into the game. He then went deep the next inning for a three-run homer off Dave Wickersham, who'd just relieved Don O'Riley, who three batters before had relieved K.C. starter Jim Rooker. Oliva's dinger capped a six-run inning and gave Minnesota a 7-2 lead.

  (O'Riley is a Royals pitcher I don't recall at all. A Topeka, Kansas, native, he pitched 28 games in 1969-70 for K.C. and had a 1-1 record with a 6.17 ERA. Guess that's maybe why I don't remember him.)

  Oliva added a two-run shot in the sixth inning off Dick Drago, the fifth of six Royals pitchers, to hike the lead to 9-2. It was the 12th of 24 homers he had on the season.

  Two innings before Oliva had doubled off Mike Hedlund, but he was put out while trying to advance on Harmon Killebrew's grounder back to the mound, the play going pitcher-to third-to second.

  That was about the only thing that kept Oliva from a perfect game. He singled in the eighth inning off Tom Burgmeier, than gave way to pinch runner Charlie Manuel.

  Also swinging big bats for the Twins were Cesar Tovar, 3-for-5 with three RBIs and three runs scored; Frank Quilici, 3-for-4 with two runs scored and a walk; George Mitterwald with a two-run homer that capped the scoring in the eighth; and Leo Cardenas, 2-for-3. (Quilici tied his game career high for hits, set four other times.)

  Rooker fell to 0-5 as he was plagued by four walks in his stint that ended with consecutive bases on balls to start the second inning. Rooker had 73 walks on the year, second to Bill Butler's team-leading 91, and next year was third in the American League in walks with 102.

  Hedlund was the only K.C. pitcher who had any success, throwing three scoreless innings.

  Buck Martinez was the lone bright spot in the Royals offense, going 3-for-4. He actually gave the Royals a 2-1 lead in the first when he singled in Oliver.

  Jim Kaat buckled down after that for the Twins and finished with a seven-hitter, the Royals getting only two runners into scoring position after the first. He improved to 8-6.

Wally Bunker worked around 11 hits as he pitched the Kansas City Royals to a 7-2 victory over Minnesota in the opening game of a doubleheader June 29, 1969.

  Wally Bunker, who qualified as the Royals ace this year with a 12-11 record and 3.23 ERA, got the first-game win, scattering 11 hits and walking none as he went the distance. He evened his record at 4-4. A reclamation project from Baltimore, he'd pitched a six-hit shutout in the 1966 World Series but had mustered only five victories the previous two seasons as arm miseries set in.

  Fiore's three-run first-inning homer off Jim Perry gave Bunker all the runs he needed. It was the seventh homer of the year for Fiore, a rookie who would finish 1969 with 12 homers and then hit one more homer in his four-year career.

  Oliver left the yard for a two-run homer in the sixth off Jerry Crider, giving the Royals a 6-1 lead. It was Oliver's eighth homer. He'd finish the year with 13, one behind team leader Ed Kirkpatrick, then slug a career-high 27 next year, K.C.'s best in a season until John Mayberry hit 34 in 1975.

  Besides Foy and Oliver, others with multiple hits for the Royals were 1969 AL Rookie of the Year Lou Piniella and Jackie Hernandez, each 2-for-4.

  Oliva broke up Bunker's shutout with a run-scoring single in the fourth, then singled his final two times up. Bunker got him out for the only time of the day on a fly to left in the first.

  While Oliva was a wrecking crew, the Royals kept the damage to a minimum from the Twins' Hall of Famers. Killebrew and Carew each went 0-for-4 in this game. The Killer, who would become this year's AL MVP, also went 0-for-4 in the nightcap. Carew, who would win the first of seven batting titles this year with a .332 average, sat out the second game.

Bob Oliver went 3-for-5 and smacked a two-run homer to help the Kansas City Royals beat Minnesota 7-2 in the opening game of a doubleheader June 29, 1969.

  Perry's record dropped to 6-4 after he gave up eight hits and four runs, all earned, in 3 1/3 innings. He went on to finish the year 20-6 and then win the AL Cy Young after going 24-12 in 1970.

  With stalwarts such as Perry, Killebrew, Carew, Oliva and others, the Twins won the AL West title in this first year of divisional play with a 97-65 record, nine games over former Kansas City tenant the Athletics of Oakland. Minnesota was then swept for the first of two straight years in the AL Championship Series by Baltimore.

  Kansas City finished its inaugural Royals season at 69-93, which was good for fourth place in the West. Two years later they'd finish second in a prelude to success that saw them win division titles from 1976 through 1978.

  As for Oliva, he went on to finish third in AL batting in 1969 with a .309 average, then added his third hitting crown and a slugging average title next year.

  Probably only a pair of debilitating knees that required seven surgeries kept Oliva from a Hall of Fame career, and his numbers still rank with many already in. As it is, and with the help of the advent of the designated hitter in 1972, Oliva lasted 15 years and had a .304 lifetime average. Besides the three batting titles, he led the league five times in hits, four times in doubles and once each in slugging and total bases. He was an eight-time All-Star, one-time Gold Glove winner and Rookie of the Year.

  And he was about as good as you could get on June 29, 1969.

Sources:

First game box score, play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B06291KCA1969.htm and  https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA196906291.shtml

Second game box score, play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B06292KCA1969.htm and https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA196906292.shtml

Most hits in a doubleheader: https://www.mlb.com/news/christian-yelich-has-8-hits-in-doubleheader/c-153096304

1940 Series: Something to shout about in Cincy

Paul Derringer pitched a seven-hitter and didn't allow an earned run as the Cincinnati Reds defeated the Detroit Tigers 2-1 in Game 7 to win the 1940 World Series. Derringer finished 2-1 in the Series.

Bobo Newsom missed a chance to win three games in the 1940 World Series when he and the Detroit Tigers dropped a 2-1 decision to the Cincinnati Reds in Game 7.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  A crowd of 26,854 settled into Crosley Field the Tuesday afternoon of Oct. 8, 1940, to see if the hometown Cincinnati Reds could capture their first World Series title in 21 years.

  The Reds did it, and the way they did it was a lot more exciting than the last time. And more honest. With some human-interest drama thrown in. And unlike last time, it happened at home, with a key play providing a bit of a preview of thrills to come in the 1946 World Series.

  When Cincinnati wrapped up the title at Comiskey Park in 1919 by beating the Chicago White Sox 10-5 in Game 8 (it was a best-of-nine Series that year), the Reds first-ever World Series title was marred by the fact it came against a team accused of throwing the World Series. In fact, that 1919 Chicago American League team is no longer known as the White Sox. They're the Black Sox.

  No such shenanigans and taint this time. Not that the Reds had anything to be ashamed of in 1919 -- to their dying day their players probably swore they were honestly the better team, and how do we know? But on this day in 1940 Cincinnatians and members of the Reds could truly hold their holds high after a 2-1 Game 7 victory over the Detroit Tigers.

  No doubt about it, in the Queen City the Reds were the Kings of Baseball.

  The deciding game came down to a taut pitching duel between Paul Derringer and Bobo Newsom, with Newsom holding the upper hand most of the way until the Reds pushed across two runs in the seventh inning.

  That made Derringer perhaps the hero of the Series with two victories in three decisions while denying Newsom a place in history as the ninth pitcher to win three games in a Series -- and first since 1920 -- as he finished 2-1. Newton was pretty heroic himself, nearly getting that third win on one day's rest. And he was doing it with a heavy heart. Newsom's father suffered a heart attack and died the morning after his son had won the opening game.

   Frank Lane, who later became famous or infamous, depending on how you look at it, as a general manager in the 1950s and '60s, rated Game 7 the "greatest game I saw." That's for an article by the same name in the April 1960 baseball issue of Dell Sports Magazine.

  "Never have I seen so much excitement," stated Lane, who in 1940 was the Reds' assistant GM.

  The excitement peaked in that fateful seventh. Newsom had a four-hit shutout until then, but Frank McCormick, that year's National League MVP, led off with a double off the left-field wall. Next came what Leo Bradley for the Society for American Baseball Research's Games Project described as "one of the most memorable moments in Reds history."

  Jimmy Ripple followed McCormick with a drive off the right-field screen to apparently drive in the tying run. Except that McCormick, thinking the ball might be caught by Bruce Campbell, held at second initially. So it was going to be a close play at the plate when Reds manager Bill McKechnie, doubling as third-base coach, waved McCormick home after he got in gear. Except that when the relay throw went from Campbell to shortstop Dick Bartell, Bartell, back to the plate, held the ball. Shades of Johnny Pesky hesitating before throwing home on Enos Slaughter's Game 7 mad dash for the St. Louis Cardinals six years later. Only Bartell didn't even throw the ball. 

  "As Bartell tried to explain later, he had no reason to think about throwing out McCormick at the plate," Bradley wrote. "A double off the right-field wall should have scored McCormick easily."

  And McCormick did score, with some bonus suspense thrown in, and it was 1-1 with Ripple on second with a double. Jimmy Wilson, who'd singled in his first two at-bats, moved Ripple to third with a perfect sacrifice bunt.

Jimmy Wilson emerged as an unlikely hero of the 1940 World Series. He'd been retired and was a coach for Cincinnati but was summoned as an emergency replacement at catcher for Ernie Lombardi. Wilson hit .353 in the Series. In Game 7 he went 2-for-2 and had a key sacrifice bunt in the Reds' 2-1 win over Detroit.

  Wilson, age 40, had been a coach but was activated after Ernie Lombardi severely sprained an ankle Sept. 15, leaving the Reds without an experienced catcher because of a tragedy that had happened earlier in the year. Backup backstop Willard Hershberger had committed suicide.

 So the Reds had turned to Wilson, with Lombardi limited to a Game 3 start in which he went 1 for 3.

  But with the game on the line today, McKechnie called on Lombardi, the 1938 NL MVP and two-time batting champ, to bat for Eddie Joost. That move was essentially wasted when the Tigers chose to intentionally walk him. Then "Schnozz" was gone from the Series as Lonny Frey ran for him.

  Up came Billy Myers with runners on first and third and a .136 average in the Series, after .202 during the regular season. He became the latest best supporting hero behind Derringer when he sent Barney McCosky to the wall in center for a fly out that scored Ripple and put Cincinnati ahead.

  (Myers didn't get credit for a sacrifice fly, because 1940 was one of 36 of the 65 seasons before 1954 when the sacrifice fly rule wasn't in effect.)

  Derringer hit into a fielder's choice, then went back out to the mound and clinched the championship.

  He had to deal with the Tigers' vaunted G Men, Hall of Famers and all-time greats Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg, starting off the eighth. Gehringer led off with a single, and McKechnie sent ace reliever Joe Beggs and Bucky Walters, a 4-0 winner the day before, to the bullpen to warm up.
 But cleanup hitter Greenberg lined out to shortstop, and Derringer then retired the next and final five batters he faced. With two out in the ninth, Earl Averill, a Hall of Famer nearing the end of his career, batted for Newsom and grounded out to Frey at second base. Bring on the bedlam.

  "Seat cushions flew from the stands, and fans emptied onto the field to join in the celebration," Bradley wrote. And outside Crosley, "on the streets of Cincinnati, confetti flew from the downtown skyline buildings as happy citizens celebrated a 21-year wait for the Reds to return to the top of the baseball world." 

  Derringer finished with a seven-hitter, and the only run he allowed was unearned. He walked three and needed only one strikeout.

  The strikeout he got was a big one, though, as it came against Greenberg with two out and runners at first and third in the third inning after Detroit had taken a 1-0 lead. Greenberg whiffed for out No. 3, and the Tigers didn't cross the plate the rest of the way.

  They came close the next inning, though, but the Reds and Derringer escaped with an unusual inning-ending play.

  Pinky Higgins doubled with two outs and Billy Sullivan was intentionally walked, bringing up Newsom. Newsom hit a grounder toward Myers at shortstop, but Higgins got in the way going to third, was struck by the ball and was called out.

  The Tigers threatened again in the sixth when Greenberg singled, went to second on a walk to Campbell and to third on Higgins' fielder's choice. But Sullivan grounded out, and Detroit didn't advance a runner to scoring position the rest of the way.

  Derringer disposed of Detroit mainly through the air, as he got eight fly outs, five pops and three line outs.

  The Tigers scored their run in the third when third baseman Bill Werber, who'd played some dazzling defense in the Reds' 4-0 win the day before, threw wide of first after fielding a hard grounder by Gehringer, allowing Sullivan to score. Sullivan had singled and Newsom bunted him to second. One out later McCosky walked and Gehringer followed with his hit. But Derringer bore down to fan Greenberg to keep it at 1-0.

  The Reds got only two runners into scoring position before breaking through in the seventh. Wilson singled with two out in the second and stole second, the only steal by any player in the Series. Newsom then got Joost to ground out.

  Mike McCormick doubled with two out in the sixth but was stranded when Ival Goodman lined out to center.

  Newsom matched Derringer with a seven-hitter, walking one and striking out six.

  Derringer, who'd gotten knocked around for four earned runs in 1 1/3 innings in the Reds' 7-2 opening-game loss, finished the Series with a 2.79 ERA to go with his 2-1 record. He bounced back with a 5-2 complete-game win in Game 4.

  It took those two seventh-inning Game 7 runs to bring Newsom's final Series ERA up to 1.38. He'd beaten Derringer in Game 1 and shut out the Reds 5-0 in Game 5, two days before Game 7. He went the distance in all three of his Series starts. This after seeing his family off to Hartsville, South Carolina, for his father's funeral. Quilline Bufkin Newsom reportedly had just seen his pitch for the second time in the major leagues before suffering his fatal heart attack.

Now for the what-ifs

  Ripple's game-tying double, and the decision of McCormick to hold his base, and the decision of Bartell not to go home were the subject of discussion for years afterward.

  “Everybody in the ballpark except McCormick knew the ball wasn’t going to be caught," Eddie Joost said in a 1989 interview.

  As for his decision to hold the ball, Bartell conceded in his 2007 book "Rowdy Richard" that maybe a perfect throw would have gotten McCormick. Joost in the '89 interview, noting McCormick's notorious lack of speed, said he would have been out. Werber, also in an 1989 interview, said only it would have been a close play.

  Lane, recalling his press-box perch, added some personal detail in his 1960 Dell Sports Magazine article.

  "Mike Higgins (Pinky), the third baseman, was screaming for the ball but the crowd was making so much noise Bartell couldn't hear him," he related. "While McCormick was lumbering home with the tying run, Bartell was tossing the ball up in the air and playing catch.

  "I remember when McCormick held up, I nearly fell off the roof. I had forgotten where I was in my excitement. I could see Campbell (right fielder Bruce) couldn't catch the ball and I yelled to Frank, 'Run, you big SOB, run.'

  "I screamed at him then and I screamed at him again when he rounded third. This time I was yelling, 'Hold up, you SOB, hold up.' I thought he was a goner. He would have been, too, if Barttell had turned around."

Game 6 'miracles'

  While Weber's throwing error let in the Tigers' only run, he capped Walters' shutout win the day before in Game 6 by turning a double play that drew raves. With Gehringer at second and Greenberg at first and nobody out in the ninth, Weber stole a hit from Rudy York and went around the horn to turn two.

  “Rudy York got a curve ball on the business end of his forty-ounce war club and smashed it hard down the third-base line," the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. "But Werber raced back like a flash, grabbed the ball in his gloved hand and turned it into a lightning double play, the third of the day for the stonewall infield.” National League President Ford Frick said, “The doubleplay handled by Werber was one of the best I’ve ever seen. It was close to a miracle.”

 Evidently it was a day for miracles. Three innings before, Wilson scored on a play that as described proves the unlikelihood of his stolen base in Game 7. With the bases loaded, Walters hit a roller to Higgins at third, and all runners were safe after Wilson beat the throw home to make the score 3-0.

 The Detroit Free Press’s description of what happened next is classic: “With the crack of the bat, Wilson gave his aging joints a stern talking to, called on them to do or die, and started off in low gear," the Detroit Free Press reported. "Ten steps and he was in second gear, doing a furious three MPH. Five yards from home he slipped into high, roared across the plate at between five and six MPH. He beat Higgins’ throw by an inch, and the crowd saluted him as if he had performed a miracle, which was exactly what he had done.”

  Back when Wilson had his legs under him, he had stolen 13 and 12 bases in 1927 and 1928 and had a career total of 86. And he had stolen one base in the 1940 regular season.

Unlikely hero  

  Although Derringer won the climactic game, Walters had better numbers in the Series with a 2-0 record and 1.50 ERA, so choosing an MVP between the two might have been tough if MVPs had been chosen back then.

  But Wilson might have been the sentimental favorite, the way he came out of retirement to hit .353, second-best on the Reds behind Werber's .370, and going 2-for-2 and setting up the winning run with his bunt in Game 7. 

  “ 'Old man' Jimmie Wilson had answered the call of his manager brilliantly and was hailed as the hero of the Series," Bradley wrote. "With his World Series exploits capturing the fascination of the nation, he was featured in Look magazine and also on the cover of The Sporting News under the headline Life Begins at 40!"

  Venerable sports writer Dan Daniel had the highest of huzzahs for Wilson in Baseball magazine.

  "Well, the biggest break the Reds got came when Lombardi hurt his ankle," Daniel wrote. "In place of 'Schnozz,' the Reds got the greatest catcher for those six games. Crafty, wise, calculating, instilling marvelous confidence in his pitchers, calling the turn on the Tigers hitters in many vital spots – he, James Wilson was the true hero. Every day he went from the game to an Epsom salt bath. Every day he had to be pasted together with bandages and adhesive, so he could go out and catch that game. The spirit of the Reds was this grand fellow named Wilson. The very spirit of the World’s Series."

Hall of Fame umpire Bill Klem called his last World Series game, at second base, in 1940's seventh game. It was the record 18th World Series for Klem, who called 11 games late in 1941 before retiring after 37 years. He was one of six Hall of Famers on the field for Game 7 in 1940.

Last call for 'Catfish'

  Amid all the drama taking place in Game 7, legendary umpire Bill "Catfish" Klem surveyed his final World Series game.

  Klem was the second-base ump in this game in the last of his record 18 Series, and first since 1934. He came back to ump 11 games late in 1941 before finally calling it quits after 37 years.

  Klem joined Tom Connolly in 1953 as the first umpires inducted into the Hall of Fame and was one of six Hall of Famers on the field for 1941 Game 7. Besides the aforementioned Gehringer, Cochrane and Averill for the Tigers, McKechnie and Lombardi from the Reds are also enshrined in Cooperstown.

Follow the bouncing Bobo

  Harry Simpson became known as "Suitcase" during the 1950s, but it would have been a far more appropriate moniker for Louis Norman “Bobo” Newsom, also known as Buck. For few players, if any, got around as much as Bobo.

  Newsom pitched for nine teams in his 20-year career. He changed teams 16 times. For four teams, he pitched more than once, including five stints with Washington. He boasted that he had more terms in Washington than President Roosevelt.

  That included many years with poor teams, which contributed to a final record of 211-222. He's one of only two pitchers who won more than 200 games but finished with a losing record.

  As much of a vagabond as he was, he was firmly entrenched as a top pitcher in the game in 1940, his best season. With a 21-5 record he finished second in the AL in wins and was also runner-up in ERA at 2.87.

Sources:

Play-by-play and box score: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1940/B10080CIN1940.htm and  https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-8-1940-reds-pitching-prevails-and-cincinnati-celebrates-first-world-series-title-in-two-decades/

More background: "The Greatest Game I Ever Saw," Dell Sports Magazine, April 1960, Dell Publishing Co.

History of sacrifice fly:  http://research.sabr.org/journals/sacrifice-fly 

Baseball Hall of Fame umpires:  https://www.baseball-almanac.com/umpires/umpiresinhof.shtml  

    

Magic Royals moments, 1977: Joe Zdeb, and his biggest fan

Joe Zdeb gave the Kansas City Royals a spark during his rookie year of 1977, hitting .297 to help them to a team-record and major league-best 102 victories.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  I'm going to get a little bit more personal with the Royal reminisces here by talking about a player who gave the team a boost for a spell during the 1970s named Joe Zdeb.

  That's Joe Zdeb, as in the only player in the history of the major leagues whose last name started with a Z that was followed by a D (with the D silent).

  Zdeb played just three years in the major leagues, all for the Royals, and the last two weren't much to speak of.

  But he made solid contributions as a rookie in 1977, when the Royals compiled their best record ever of 102-60 (major league best), when many think they had their best team, when Hal McRae hit 54 doubles when nobody else was hitting nearly that many. And the year the Royals blew a 2-1 lead on the Yankees in the American League Championship Series with two games to go at home. Bittersweet memories.

  Zdeb batted .297 that year, fifth-best among Royals with 150 at-bats, but the main thing I'll remember is how much my father loved him and how much he stuck up for him.

  Now, my dad wasn't the biggest sports fan in the world but he'd follow along, and being as my brothers and I and my buddies were avid Royals fans at the time, he formed some opinions about them. They were selective opinions; he'd pick and choose, and then he'd harp on the ones he picked.

  Joe Zdeb was a case in point. Zdeb played in 105 games for the 1977 Royals, but as far as my dad was concerned it should have been 162. He thought Zdeb got the shaft when it came to whom manager Whitey Herzog decided to play in left field alongside Amos Otis in center and Al Cowens in right. (This was two years before Willie Wilson took over full time in left to give the Royals one of the most wide-ranging outfields in major league history.)

  Zdeb played 87 games in left in '77, starting 40. He played eight more in right, starting one, and had four games as a designated hitter, one each at center and third base. Besides his .297 average, Zdeb had a .374 slugging average, two homers, 23 RBIs and 26 runs scored.

  Tom Poquette was the Royals' other main left fielder that year. He played 73 games in left, starting 60, and also 28 in right and one in center. He had a .292 average, .337 slugging, with two homers, 33 RBIs and 43 runs scored in his 106 games.

  So not much to choose from between the two. Poquette has the edge in run production, Zdeb in the averages.

  Taking it beyond the standard offensive stats, Zdeb had six steals (five caught stealing), 16 walks, five doubles, two triples and a .345 on-base percentage. Poquette: one steal (four caught), 23 doubles, six triples and .337 OBP. Zdeb had a higher slugging percentage despite far less extra-base hits, but that can be explained by the fact although they played about the same number of games, Poquette compiled 342 at-bats to 195 for Zdeb.

  And the main reason for that discrepancy, and the main reason they split time in left, was because Poqutte was a left-handed hitter, Zdeb right, and Herzog loved to platoon and use his roster as much as possible. And there were more right-handers for Poquette to face than lefties for Zdeb.

  How about defense? Looks like Poquette had a decided edge here -- 1.000 fielding percentage with a 2.20 range factor to .970 percentage and 1.94 range for Zdeb. And Poquette had a Rtot (fielding runs above average, whatever that means) of 7 to 1 for Zdeb.

  Taken overall, I think you have to give the edge to Poquette, and that's borne out in his 1.6-0.4 advantage that year in WAR (wins above replacement), the modern metric that attempts to sum up a player's overall value in one number, with all variables figured in. 

  But my dad couldn't have cared about all this. He just liked Zdeb better -- maybe because my dad thought he was more of a hustler or had a more rugged-sounding name or was more rugged-looking, or maybe he had a game or two sunk in his mind, I don't know. He just thought Zdeb should have been in there more. And I heard all about it.

  Can't recall whether I heard about it the next two years, but I doubt it. Because Zdeb hit only .252 in 60 games in 1978 and .174 in 15 games the next year, and then he was gone from the big leagues.

  I can't find too much to trace Zdeb's decline, other than his player registers at baseballreference.com and retrosheet.org and his Wikipedia entry.

  But for that summer of '77, I remember Zdeb having his moments. And not just because of my dad. So here's a closer look at the summer of Zdeb (and I had to look these up, my memory's not that great):

  -- Most notable was a game July 1 when he went 5-for-5 with four RBIs, two doubles and a homer in a game won 12-2 by the Royals over the Indians at Cleveland Stadium.

  Hitting in the No. 6 slot that Friday night, Zdeb singled his first two times up and then unloaded his second and last homer of the year, a three-run shot to deep left field in the fifth inning that capped a five-run inning, putting the Royals ahead for good at 7-2.

  Zdeb came through again with a two-run double in a four-run sixth that gave K.C. an 11-2 lead. He doubled his last time up, in the ninth, but was thrown out trying to stretch the hit into a triple.

  Zdeb displayed his spray-hitting ability, typical of the Royals' attack, with two hits to right, two to left and one to center.

  With the win the Royals lagged 2 1/2 games behind Chicago and Minnesota, tied atop the American League West.

  -- Another big game for Zdeb came Aug. 6 when he went 3-for-4 with a double and triple, a homer short of a cycle in the Royals' 6-3 win over Chicago. Again batting No. 6, again he moved the ball around with a triple and single to right and double to left. He didn't drive in any runs, but he scored the Royals' last in the eighth on a sacrifice by Bob Heise after reaching on a fielder's choice as the second batter in the inning.

  The Royals were still 2 1/2 games behind the White Sox and in third place after this win.

 --  He went 2-for-5 with two RBIs in a 9-6 win over Milwaukee on Aug. 25. Batting No. 7 this time, his two-run single in the second put the Royals ahead for good at 2-1. He also scored the last run in a six-run third after reaching on a fielder's choice and stealing second.

  That was the ninth win in a 10-game streak that lifted the Royals into a three-game lead in the West. A later team-record 16-game streak left the rest in the dust as K.C. went on to win the division by eight games over next-best Texas.

  -- Perhaps Zdeb's biggest clutch contribution came June 25 when he hit a two-run homer in the seventh to give the Royals a 4-2 lead in a game they won over Oakland 6-4.

  All told, in addition to his big 5-for-5 blowout July 1, he had four games with three hits, nine with two hits and two with two RBIs.

  So although not a crucial contributor to the Royals' best-ever regular season, a vital one nonetheless.

  Not so in the 1977 ALCS, in which he went 0-for-9. He started the first two games and went 0-for-7, stealing a base after reaching on a fielder's choice in Game 1. He was a defensive replacement in Game 3, then was 0-for-2 coming off the bench in Game 4 to face lefty Sparky Lyle, who slammed the door on the Royals in that game with 5 1/3 innings of shutout relief. Zdeb didn't leave the bench in Game 5, when the Yankees broke the Royals' hearts with a 5-3 ninth-inning comeback win.

Joe Zdeb showing looking quite a bit different from as he did in a baseball uniform, as as an investment adviser with Prime Capital Investment Advisors in Overland, Park, Kansas. 

  (I did find a nice picture online of him crashing into a wall to make a catch at Yankee Stadium, so that's one highlight. But the photo doesn't provide enough details to figure out any accompanying information. Flied out to left in the Retrosheet play-by-play doesn't help much. And I couldn't figure out a way to reproduce a .jpg image here without shelling out a lot of bucks.)

  The bottom fell out after '77. So what happened the next two years? Not much can be found other than in his Wikipedia entry, which indicates the arrival of Wilson had something to do with his lessened playing time. But beyond that he just appears to have lost his batting stroke, and even trips back down to the minor leagues in '78 and '79 didn't help. He batted .224 at Omaha in '79 after being demoted.

  He was traded in January 1980 to the Chicago White Sox. He hit .194 that year playing in the minors for the Iowa Oaks and Tidewater Tides, and then the tide washed out on his playing career.

  If info on his baseball career is lacking, an online search does reveal Zdeb found a baseball afterlife as an investment adviser with Prime Capital Investment Advisors in Overland, Park, Kansas.

 “My life as a professional athlete taught me some important lessons, such as how to budget my time and how paying attention to details is critically important to success," he says on his PCIA website.

  So it sounds like whether it was the quasi-glory of '77 or the washout that followed, it was all worthwhile. And he gained at least one big fan.

Pre-Royals

  Items of note on Zdeb's athletic life before joining the Royals, and of personal note:

  -- Zdeb, who had a distinctive look with flowing hair and mustache while with the Royals, was perhaps a bit too hirsute to suit the Royals organization before joining the big club. From Wikipedia:

  "At some point, during minor league spring training, he showed up to camp with long hair, which was against team policy. Manager Joe Gordon refused to give him a uniform, so he approached general manager Lou Gorman, asking "Mr. Gorman, if I cut my hair, will I become a better ballplayer?" Gorman said he needed to cut it to properly represent the organization, and after initially refusing, he did so a couple days later."

  No year is given for this, and although Joe Gordon was the Royals' first manager in their expansion year of 1969, his Society for American Baseball Research biography says Gorden didn't manage thereafter, although he was a Royals scout. But this is Wikepedia.

  -- Zdeb was drafted  in the fourth round of the 1971 MLB June Amateur Draft from Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. That was the same year the Royals drafted Hall of Famer George Brett and Steve Busby, who might have had a Hall of Fame career cut short by injury, each in the second round. Other future Royals mainstays drafted that year were John Wathan, in January back when baseball had a January draft, and Mark Littell.

  The Royals first draft pick that June? The immortal Roy Branch, who made it the majors one year, with Seattle in 1979.

  -- If Zdeb hadn't opted for baseball, he might have become known elsewhere in Missouri, halfway across the state playing football for the Missouri Tigers.

  According to Wikipedia: "A fullback, he signed a letter of intent to play football at the University of Missouri, with a promise that he would also be allowed to play baseball."

   -- Zdeb's progress was slower than Brett's and Busby's and he had an uneven six years in the minors, but he earned his shot by batting .298 with Triple-A Omaha in 1976.

  -- As for where that last name came from, Zdeb told Chuck Woodling of the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World: "Aw, it's a little bit Irish and some Polish. Who knows?"

Sources:

Joe Zdeb's 1977 batting log: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1977/Izdebj1010011977.htm

Biographical info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Zdeb and https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19770708&id=5bgxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AeYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6825,990761

Joe Zdeb the investor: https://qualifiedplanadvisors.com/directors-advisors/joe-zdeb/

Royals 1971 draft: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/KCR/1971-transactions.shtml#:~:text=Drafted%20John%20Wathan%20in%20the%201st%20round%20%284th,%28January%20Secondary%29%2C%20but%20did%20not%20sign%20the%20player.  

Swoonin' A's, 1962: Fischer tops Matty for all-time control artistry

Bill Fischer set an all-time major league record when he went 84 1/3 innings without issuing a walk for the Kansas City Athletics late in the 1962 season. He broke the record of 68 innings set by the legendary Christy Mathewson in 1913.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  What do Christy Mathewson and Bill Fischer have in common?

  Well, they were both major league pitchers, with widely contrasting career results. "Big Six" Mathewson is tied with Pete Alexander for the most National League victories of all time and third-most overall, with a 17-year record of 373-188 and a 2.13 ERA. He was one of the original six players voted into the Hall of Fame in 1936.

  Fischer? A little bit short of Cooperstown. He went 45-58 with a 4.34 ERA over a career that covered nine seasons  in the major leagues.

  Mathewson was also one of the greatest control pitchers of all time, seven times leading the NL in least walks per nine innings. And that's where he and Fischer have something in common.

 When Fischer, pitching for the Kansas City Athletics, got Baltimore's Brooks Robinson to hit into a fielder's choice to close out the Orioles' half of the seventh inning Sept. 15, 1962, Fischer joined Mathewson in the history books. In fact, he'd surpassed him.

  With that third out that inning that Saturday night at Kansas City's Municipal Stadium, before an "appreciative" crowd of 7,884, Fischer had now pitched 68 1/3 innings without issuing a walk. That broke the record of 68 innings Mathewson had held since 1913 for consecutive walkless innings, and it still stands.

  Fischer carried his masterful control through to the fifth inning of the final day of the season, Sept. 30. When Detroit's Bubba Morton coaxed a base on balls with one out at Tiger Stadium, Fischer's string was over at 84 1/3 innings -- a little more than nine straight nine-inning games. And then he promptly wild-pitched Morton to second. And gave way to a reliever at the end of the inning.

  And Fischer took the loss as Jim Bunning and the Tigers prevailed 6-1.

  That gave Fischer, who'd spent the early part of the 1962 season at Triple-A Portland, a final record of 4-12 with a 3.95 ERA. So no, all the while he kept from hurting himself with walks, he wasn't exactly mowing 'em down. In fact, his record was 2-10 during his walkless streak, which had begun Aug. 3 when another Bubba, Bubba Phillips, was issued a free pass leading off the game for Cleveland.

  But hey, this is the Kansas City A's we're talking about here, so any bit of positive immortality that came their way was most welcome. Most of the time it was in a negative manner that they made their mark in their 13-year history in K.C. before moving to Oakland.

  Example? Well, on April 22, 1959, Kansas City pitchers managed to issue 10 more walks in one inning than Fischer dealt in his 84 1/3 stretch.

  Yes, the Chicago White Sox collected 10 walks and managed to score 11 runs on one hit in the seventh inning in a 20-6 snoozer at Municipal. The A's came within one walk of the major league record for an inning set Sept. 11, 1949, by the Washington Senators against the New York Yankees.

  Another example: Mickey Mantle says the hardest ball he ever hit was a shot off the facade of the right-field roof at Yankee Stadium in 1963 against the A's. He nearly became the first player to hit a ball out of The House That Ruth Built. And who served up that mammoth blast?

  None other than Mr. Fischer.

  But on the positive side, and you take it where you can get it with the Kansas City A's, Fischer's walkless streak might rank with Bert Campaneris' playing nine positions in a game in 1965 as the most distinguished individual feats in Kansas City A's history.

  And although his final 1962 record wasn't sparkling, his ERA ranked second behind Diego Segui's 3.86 among K.C. pitchers with 100 innings and was just under the league average.

  He ran into some hard luck during those 84 1/3 walkless innings, absorbing three 1-0 losses, including Jack Kralick's no-hitter for Minnesota on Aug. 29, and two others where the A's scored a total of one run. His ERA from Aug. 3 on was a quite sturdy 3.91.

  To gain some more appreciation for what Fischer accomplished in avoiding those walks, I took a look at the American League's top 10 in drawing bases on balls for 1962. Included in that number are Hall of Famers Mantle and Harmon Killebrew and other sluggers such as Norm Cash, Rocky Colavito and Roger Maris.

  Those 10 batters had 44 at-bats during Fischer's streak without squeezing a walk out of him. And that doesn't mean they were feasting on his strikes. Take away 3-for-4 outings Cash and Colavito had against him, and those hitters went a collective 6-for-36, for a .166 average.

  So Fischer was doing some good by managing to avoid those walks. It just didn't add up in the win-loss column.

  But hey, like we said, the Kansas City A's. With that closing loss to Detroit, they finished 1962 with a 72-90 record, ninth and next-to-last in the American League. But it was an 11-win improvement over 1961, when they'd also finished ninth. It was their most wins since a 73-81 mark in 1958 good for seventh (AL was eight teams then). And then they won 73 in 1963. But then 57 and 59 the two years after that.

  Like we said, the Kansas City A's.

  Getting back to Fischer breaking Mathewson's record. As he was toiling for the hapless A's, and wasn't otherwise setting the world on fire, Fischer kind of crept up on Matty.

  “Nobody even noticed it until I pitched a game in Chicago,” he told Tim Pearrell for a 1997 Richmond (Virginia) Times Dispatch article. " I got taken out of the game in the seventh inning and they put up on the scoreboard, ‘Fischer has now gone 60 innings without a walk.’ It was the first I knew of it. Then they started blowing it up a little bit.”

  To be technical, in that Sept. 10 game Fischer referred to (in which he took a 4-3 loss) he was pinch hit for in the seventh inning, and the walkless streak had reached 61 1/3 innings. But at any rate, he was on the radar.

  And five days later he'd supplanted "Big Six" after he got Robinson to hit that grounder to shortstop Wayne Causey in the seventh. He was replaced with two out in the eighth and the A's leading 4-3. Alas, they lost 5-4 in 11 innings.

  So how sharp was Fischer's control before the streak? Not so razor, as he walked eight in his other 42 2/3 innings. Still, he had a final average of 0.6 walks per nine innings. Dick Donovan, the league's leader that year in that category among qualified pitchers, averaged 1.68. And ironically, Mathewson's BB/9 the year he'd set that walkless record in 1913? 0.6.

  (Mathewson's '13 ratio extends to 0.6176, which is the third-best of all time since 1900 behind Carlos Silva's .4301 in 2005 and Babe Adams' .6160 in 1920. Again, talking about pitchers with enough qualified innings.)

  Fischer shrugged off his accuracy in the typical self-effacing, aw-shucks manner he always displayed. 

  "There are only two reasons a guy is wild," Fischer told John O’Connor of the Richmond (Virginia) Times Dispatch in a 1998 article. "He’s got bad mechanics or he’s afraid. I had pretty good mechanics, and I was too dumb to be afraid."

  As for Fischer's control the rest of his years, the closest he came to that 0.6 in '62 was 2.1 in '59 with Washington, and with enough qualifying innings he ranked sixth in the AL. His mechanics must have improved, for his BB/9 had been 3.2 in 1958 and he'd ranked fifth in the AL in wild pitches in '57.

  For his career, Fischer came in with a 2.3 BB/9.

  As for Fischer's overall pitching through the years, it was rather up and down, the very definition of a journeyman pitcher.

  And one of Fischer's pitches ended way, way up. That would be the one Mantle sent into orbit in the 11th inning May 22,1963 with the score tied 7-7, for an emphatic game-ender. According to the Society of American Baseball Research's "Home Run Encyclopedia," it struck the façade on the Yankee Stadium right-field roof approximately 370 feet from home plate and 115 feet above field level.

  “Almost everyone in attendance believed that the ball was still rising when it was interrupted in midflight by the roof structure," William J. Jenkinson wrote. "Based upon that belief, this drive has commonly been estimated at about 620 feet if left unimpeded.”

  So in this case, Fischer's control betrayed him, you might say, and he paid. According to Fischer's SABR bio by Bob LeMoine, A's manager Eddie Lopat, a former Yankees pitching standout, had a $200 fine in effect for anyone who gave Mantle a good pitch to hit in a win-or-lose situation.

  "I got this one outside, but a little bit too high," Lopat told The Sporting News.

  Fischer's best major league season as a starter was 1959, when he went 9-11 with a 4.28 ERA. On April 22 of that year he lost a 1-0 14-inning decision to the Yankees and Hall of Famer Whitey Ford. He shut out New York for 10 innings before giving way to a reliever. Ford went the distance.

  His best season as a reliever was 1963, when he was 9-6 with a 3.57 ERA. But even then Fischer wasn't too impressed with what success he had.

 “It’s nice. It’s great,” Fischer told Jack Hand of The Associated Press. “But I’m just a …what is it they say? … a Humpty Dumpty. I’m 32. I’m not going to be a star. I’m just a mediocre pitcher."

  Fischer's final big league season was 1964, but he hung on for four more years in the minor leagues, giving him 20 years of pro ball. In another example of his knack for finding the plate, on May 3, 1965, with Indianapolis, Fischer pitched a 1-0 two-hit shutout over San Diego in which 70 of his 90 pitches were strikes.

Kansas City Royals senior pitching adviser Bill Fischer is seen during a spring training workout in Surprise, Arizona, late in his 71-year baseball career. The pitchers he tutored knew him as "Walking Wisdom."  (John Sleezer/Kansas City Star)

Fischer the coach

  After retiring as pitcher Fischer became a distinguished pitching coach, on the minor or major league level with the Kansas City Royals, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Atlanta Braves and Tampa Bay Reds organizations. Among the accomplished hurlers he worked with were Dennis Leonard, Dan Quisenberry, Bret Saberhagen, Mark Gubicza, Roger Clemens and Tom Seaver.

  And among those pitchers were ones well-noted for, you guessed it, control. Saberhagen's walks per nine innings ratio of 0.6598 in 1994 is the fourth-best all time since 1900. Quisenberry had BB/9s of under 1.0 from 1982 through 1984 and a career mark of 1.4. In both of Clemens' record-setting 20-strikeout games, he didn't walk a batter.

 "He deserves a great deal of credit for what he has done," Clemens told Larry Whiteside of the Boston Globe in 1991. "I think I owe him just as much for the third (Cy Young Award) as I did for the other two.”

  From his boss at Cincinnati, Reds manager John McNamara, came this praise in The Sporting News: “I’ve worked with a lot of excellent pitching coaches in my time, but Fischer has the best knowledge of mechanics I’ve seen."

  In Fischer's last position, as the Royals' senior pitching adviser, he appropriately enough became known by players a quarter of his age as “Walking Wisdom.” He had this to say about that:

 “Walking wisdom, eh?” he told  Joe Posnanski of The Kansas City Star in 2008. “Yeah, they should have been there that day when Ol’ Walking Wisdom pitched for the Kansas City A’s and decided to throw a bleeping fastball to Mickey Mantle. The Mick blasted it off of the bleeping right-field façade at Yankee Stadium. They called it 620 feet. They called it 734 feet. Whatever, it was bleeping far.”

  Fischer, whose baseball career spanned 71 years, died Oct. 30, 2018, at age 88. 

Sources:

Box score, play-by-play, start of streak: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B08030CLE1962.htm 

Box, play-by-play, record-breaking game:  https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B09152KC11962.htm   

Box, play-by-play, end of streak: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B09300DET1962.htm

Bill Fischer's pitching log for 1962: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/Kfiscb1010111962.htm

Fischer biographical information: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bill-fischer/, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Bill_Fischer#:~:text=Bill%20Fischer%20pitched%20nine%20years,innings%20without%20issuing%20a%20walk. and https://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article220903370.html 

Historical Kansas City A's moments: https://sportsecyclopedia.com/al/kcityas/kca_s.html