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It was the day after the end of tax season and I’m in full recovery mode. My online friend, retired sportscaster and DJ, Mike McCann Tauss, sent me a video clip of a Dodger game at Ebbets Field. The challenge accompanying the clip was whether we could identify the year.  Normally I do this kind of detective work alone.  But with Mike sending the video and being into it, we worked on it together.  We not only identified the year, we identified the exact game.  But along the way, we may have discovered something surprising.

The clip said that the Dodgers were playing the Pirates, and the front of the visiting team uniforms confirmed that.  It was clear that whoever was taking the video was focusing on stars batting.  There were two clips of a right handed batter wearing number four, Ralph Kiner of the Pirates, and two clips of a left handed batter wearing number four, Duke Snider of the Dodgers.  But that didn’t narrow things down very much.  Kiner played for the Pirates from 1946 to 1953 and Snider played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1957.  Other well-known Brooklyn Dodgers with visible numbers were Pee Wee Reese (#1: 1940-42, 46-57), Gil Hodges (#14: 1943, 47-57), Roy Campanella (#39: 1948-57) and Jackie Robinson (#42: 1947-56).

The difficulty in seeing the uniform numbers on the Dodgers was a clue.  In 1952, the Dodgers put red numerals on the lower left side of the front of their home uniforms.  There were no numbers there in this video.  I remembered that in 1951, every team in the National League wore a patch on the upper left sleeve of the uniform, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the league.  Both teams were sans patch.  So between Campanella and the Dodger uniforms, we had it narrowed down to 1948-50.

We agreed that the Dodger pitcher wore number 26.  That number was worn by Rex Barney in all of those seasons.  So it confirmed the years, but didn’t narrow it down any further.  Neither of us could spot the number worn by the Pirates pitcher.  Mike noted that the Pirates first base coach wore #32.  In  1948, #32 was worn by former Dodger pitcher Hal Gregg.  But in 1949, the Pirates decided to assign numbers 31-34 to their four uniformed coaches.  They kept that system in 1950.  Now we had it narrowed down to 1949-50.

Barney pitched far more often in 1949 than in 1950.  He threw so fast, when the Dodgers signed Sandy Koufax in December 1954, they compared Sandy’s fast ball to Rex.  Barney’s best season was in 1948 when he tossed a no-hitter and a one-hitter among the three shutouts he tossed in the last six weeks of the season. We were about to do the grunt work of looking at the box score of every game that Barney pitched at Ebbets Field against the Pirates in 1949 and 1950, with an emphasis on day games, because it looked like a day game on the video.  (But it could have been the first game of a twi-night doubleheader or the early innings of a night game in late spring or early summer.)

That’s when Mike spotted that the Pirates catcher was wearing #17.   He said that the catcher was Phil Masi.  Masi is better known for being called safe during one of the most controversial umpiring calls in World Series history in 1948. But in the middle of 1949, he was slumping at the plate and was traded by the Braves to the Pirates for Ed Sauer, younger brother of star slugger Hank Sauer.  At the start of spring training in 1950, the Pirates sold Masi to the White Sox.  So if it was Masi, we had it narrowed down to the second half of the 1949 season.  But could we be sure that it was Masi?

Number 17 adorned the uniform for four members of the Pirates in 1949.  Besides Masi, there was outfielder Ted Beard who also wore the number in 1948 and was sent down to the Pirates Triple-A farm club in Indianapolis on May 15 when the rosters had to be reduced from 28 to 25 players; infielder Bobby Rhawn, who had been acquired on June 6 from the Giants and was lost to the White Sox on waivers nine days later, the same day that the Pirates acquired Masi from the Braves; outfielder Marv Rackley, who was with the Pirates for three weeks between Beard being sent down and Rhawn being acquired (more on Rackley below).

But remember that 1950 is ruled out only if we can be sure that the catcher is Masi.  Who wore #17 in 1950?  Ted Beard made his way back to the majors with the Pirates, this time lasting until August before being farmed out to Indianapolis.  He was the only Buc to wear #17 in a game that season.  More to the point, Masi was the only one of the four who ever caught a major league game.  Rackley only played 8 games in the field for the Bucs in his brief time with them, all in centerfield.  Rhawn only played 2 games in the field with Pittsburgh, both at third base.  And all of Beard’s 109 games in the field from 1948 to 1952 were in the outfield.  So yes, in the years in question, a catcher for the Pirates in a major league game wearing #17 had to be Phil Masi. 

At this point, finding the right game was easy.  Masi caught only one game for the Pirates at Ebbets Field in 1949.  In fact, seeing that he was sent to the American League by the Pirates after the 1949 season, it would be his last game at Ebbets Field.  It was a Tuesday afternoon game on August 30.  It was the Pirates last game of the year in Brooklyn and the Dodgers finished a sweep of their three game series when Gil Hodges hit a two-run walk off homer to win the game, 4-3.  It was the first walk off home run of Gil’s MLB career. 

Gil Hodges: powerful slugging first baseman who was generally considered the best fielder at his position in his era.

But there was one anomaly that it took some time to resolve.  In fact, the only resolution we could find calls into question the account that we have for the game.  There is a play during the video when Pee Wee Reese is at the plate.  He hits a grounder to Pete Castiglione at third base.  There’s a throw to second base for a force play, but the relay throw is too late to double up Pee Wee. 

Reese came to bat four times in this game.  He led off the bottom of the first and flied out to Wally Westlake in right field.  In the third, he singled to left to drive home Mike McCormick with the Dodgers first run of the game, cutting the Pirates lead to 2-1.  And in the eighth, he flied out to Westlake again.

So that left his at bat in the sixth inning.  Barney led off with a single. According to the play by play, Reese grounded to third and forced Barney at second, third baseman to second baseman.  Reese then stole second and scored on a single by Billy Cox to tie the game, 2-2. 

What’s the problem?  The video clearly shows that the Pirate catching the relay throw that was too tardy to complete the double play was wearing #7.  The only Pirate to wear #7 from 1948 to 1951 was future Pirate manager Danny Murtaugh.  Murtaugh played the vast majority of his career at second base, but he did play some shortstop and third base.  But standing only 5’9”, he never played any first base during a regular season game, even in an emergency.  If he is catching the relay throw at first base, he cannot have recorded the putout at second base when Barney was forced out on Reese’s grounder to third.

Here’s what I think happened.  Taking a close look at the video, when Reese hits the grounder, briefly a fielder can be seen running towards home.  That would have to be the first baseman, Johnny Hopp (#12).  With the Dodgers trailing by a run and no one out, the Pirates were expecting Pee Wee, an excellent bunter, to sacrifice Barney to second.  So they put on the rotation play.  Hopp charges in case Pee Wee bunts that direction, Murtaugh covers first, shortstop Stan Rojek covers second, Murry Dickson the pitcher has to cover any bunts toward the third base direction and Castiglione plays a relatively normal depth at third base.  Pee Wee crossed them up by swinging away, but his grounder didn’t find a hole.  It was a relatively easy play for Castiglione. 

Danny Murtaugh during his playing days with the Pirates.

The unusual play is for the third baseman to throw to the shortstop to get a force at second, at least it was before the days of shifting infielders all around until the rules were changed this year.  My hypothesis is that the official scorer forgot that the rotation play was on and recorded the normal situation when a force play is recorded at second on a grounder to third: third baseman to second baseman.  However, not only can one clearly see in the video that Murtaugh is covering first base, so he couldn’t have been at second, the person getting the force at second catches the throw from third base by his right shoulder and then runs a couple of steps to his left to beat Barney to the bag. 

Why didn’t the official scorer’s mistake get caught?  Players are likely to look in the next day’s newspaper for the box score if there was a borderline call to see if a hit got changed to an error and vice versa.  But they’re not likely to check to see the amount of putouts or assists credited to them.  Many papers didn’t even carry that info in their box scores; just at bats, runs, hits and RBIs for the batters and the pitchers’ line for the moundsmen. And so it slipped through.

Another possibility is that Retrosheet didn’t get the play by play from the official scorer’s official log.  Instead they got it from an unofficial source such as the next day’s newspaper or someone who went to the game and kept score.  That wouldn’t be as accurate.  Usually unofficial accounts had gaps (e.g. player X “retired on unknown play”).  But this Retrosheet play by play has no gaps.

Any chance that we have the wrong catcher for the Pirates?  Most of their catchers wore single digit numbers in 1948-50.  But there were two exceptions: Clyde Kluttz and Earl Turner.  I checked for the games that they played at Ebbets Field in those seasons.  Either Barney was not pitching that day, all four of the other Dodgers whose numbers are visible (Reese, Snider, Hodges and Campanella) didn’t play, or Reese didn’t hit into a force play at second base. 

Ty Cobb and his batting stance

Even if we caught a mistake, truly this is not an earth-shattering revelation.  If a putout is taken away from Murtaugh and given to Rojek, no records will be established or taken away.  No one’s Gold Glove will be brought into question: they weren’t even a thing back then.  It’s only baseball junkies that love this kind of detective work and the idea that some obscure fact might have been discovered.  It’s not nearly as important as the controversy in 1922 where an official scorer’s ruling of an error on a grounder by Ty Cobb gave him an extra hit and his final .400+ batting average season (though not a batting title). It was still being protested at the winter meetings two months after the end of the season and the World Series. https://sabr.org/journal/article/1922-to-meet-or-not-to-meet/

The only other possible fallout if this article gets any traction is that it might put some warranted attention back on Danny Murtaugh.  While he was not a Hall of Fame caliber player, there are a number of knowledgeable baseball people who believe he deserves to be in the Hall as a manager, pointing to his 1106 regular season wins, .540 winning percentage, two for two in World Series appearances and four NL East Champions.  He was also 2 and 0 with one tie as All Star Game manager.

And speaking of baseball junkies, why Johnny Hopp was playing first base for the Pirates and Marv Rackley wore #17 for the Pirates in 1949 deserves a further look.  There’s a reason why Rackley was only with the Pirates for three weeks.  And it is connected with Johnny Hopp.  Hopp was supposed to be with the Dodgers on August 30, 1949.  And Rackley was still supposed to be with the Pirates.  The Dodgers traded Rackley to the Pirates for Hopp on May 18, 1949.  I’ll let Rackley’s SABR biography pick up the story from here:

The transaction was made on May 17; in addition to Hopp, the Pirates also threw in $25,000. Then things started getting weird.

Not long after joining the Pirates, Rackley complained of a sore throwing arm. His new employers suspected that Rickey had obtained Hopp (and $25,000) under false pretenses. Of course, Rickey claimed that he’d known nothing of a sore arm, telling the New York Herald Tribune’s Harold Rosenthal, “I then spoke in turn to Burt Shotton, my manager, and Clyde Sukeforth, the coach, about the arm. Neither of them knew of any sore arm the boy had when he was with the club. Our trainer, Doc Wendler, said that Rackley had made a report of a sore arm in spring training, but didn’t think it was anything. Everyone had a sore arm in spring training.”

By June 6 Rickey offered to return Hopp and the $25,000 to Pittsburgh, who accepted even though Rackley had gone 11-for-35 as a Pirate and Hopp was hitless in fourteen at-bats with Brooklyn. (Rackley wasn’t quite finished annoying Rickey. Upon rejoining the Dodgers, he was reported to have said, “My arm’s all right, now that I’m back with the Dodgers.”)

Marv Rackley: a Dodger in 1949 except for 3 weeks with the Pirates.

But it might have backfired on Rackley.  After the season, Rackley was sold to Cincinnati.  In May they sent him down to the minors.  He played through 1955, but never made it back to the majors again.  With only 16 teams and the abundance of talent available to them, perhaps major league general managers didn’t want to deal with a player who would lie about his physical condition to get sent away from a losing team to a contender and eventual pennant winner.

And the Dodgers beat out the Cardinals by only one game in 1949.  Every win was important, including this one on August 30, regardless of who was credited with putouts and assists.

Time log of various events on the video:

0:00 – Ralph Kiner (Pitt.) flies out to Carl Furillo (Bklyn.) in right field [4th inning]

0:15 – Wally Westlake (Pitt.) singles to center [4th inning]

0:21 – Duke Snider (Bklyn.) grounds out to Danny Murtaugh (Pitt.) at second base [4th inning]

0:32 – Kiner grounds out to Jackie Robinson (Bklyn.) at second base [6th inning]

0:44 – The play discussed in detail in this post of Pee Wee Reese (Bklyn.) hitting a ground ball to Pete Castiglione (Pitt.) at third base and forcing Rex Barney (Bklyn.) at second base [6th inning]

0:53 – Snider strikes out [6th inning]

1:11 – Robinson walks [6th inning – Retrosheet calls it an intentional walk, but it doesn’t look like one from the video, except perhaps the fourth ball which is low and outside; but the catcher never steps out or holds out his glove over the opposite batters’ box the way I’ve seen catchers always do]

1:31 – Roy Campanella (Bklyn.) flies out to Westlake in right field; looked like he caught it close to the wall [6th inning]

Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. – James 5:19-20

God bless, Lois