"Ol' Pete" Browning batted .341 in 13 seasons in the American Association and National League from 1882-1894. Pete's achievement is especially remarkable because he stayed drunk, on and off the field, most of the time.

• A severe case of mastoiditis as a child left him almost completely deaf. Alcohol was his painkiller of choice. He usually kept a flask inside his uniform shirt during games.
• In 1887, while playing for the Louisville Colonels of the American Association, Pete missed the first game of a series in Cincinnati because he was "too intoxicated to find his way to the train."
• Still drunk, Browning arrived for game two and doubled. He proceeded to take a 15-foot lead off second and fell asleep. The 2B "walked up and put him out, to the intense disgust of the spectators."
• His lack of sobriety has kept Ol' Pete out of the Hall of Fame despite the fact that he has the twelfth-highest career batting average in baseball history, only a point behind Babe Ruth – no model of temperance himself.

Browning has another claim to fame in baseball history.

• Once, while in a slump, he broke his bat hitting a dribbler to first in a game in Louisville. After the game, a teenage boy approached the slugger and asked if he needed a new bat. The boy was "Bud" Hillerich, whose father owned a wood shop.
• Pete went to the Hillerich family business, where he selected a piece of white ash. The boy carved and sanded a bat that Pete tested during the night until it was just right. They called it the "Falls City Slugger."
• That incident was the origin of the company that has been the major producer of bats ever since. In 1894, Hillerich registered the name "Louisville Slugger" with the U.S. Patent Office.

Hank Bauer

Hack Wilson is famous for driving home a record 191 runs in 1930 with the Chicago Cubs. But what is not usually known is that Hack came to the Cubs because of a blunder by the New York Giants front office that John McGraw rued for the rest of his career.

• Wilson played in three games for the Giants in 1923, then 107 in 1924. He showed promise when he replaced the injured Billy Southworth in CF, batting .295 with 57 RBI. Hack played in all seven games of the World Series, amassing a .233 average and 3 RBI.
• In 1925, after hitting only .239 in 62 games, Wilson was traded to Toledo, where he hit .343 in 55 games.
• In the off-season, because of a clerical error, Hack was not included on the Giants' list of protected minor league players.
• The Cubs took Wilson from Toledo in what was known as the "Rule 5 Draft."

Hack earned election to the Hall of Fame in 1979 because of the numbers he put up with the Cubs.

• He drove in 708 runs for Chicago from 1926 through 1930.
• Unfortunately, he succumbed to alcoholism at that point, and his productivity dropped sharply in 1931.
• That led to his trade to the Brooklyn Dodgers. After driving in 123 runs in 1932, he again fell off (the wagon and statistically) and retired after the '34 season.

Willie Mays

Warren Spahn

September 3, 1939: Fenway Park, Boston.

The Yankees had lost the "bruising opener" of the Sunday DH 12-11 for their seventh straight defeat at the hands of the Bosox. Now they had taken a 7-5 lead in the top of the eighth of the nightcap. However, they faced a more potent enemy than the home team – Boston's 6:30 curfew for Sunday games.

• CF Joe DiMaggio, who had not played in the first game because of a "slight knee injury," banged his 25th HR and two singles while RF Ted Williams, "sensational Red Sox rookie," whacked his 23rd and 24th round-trippers.
• Charlie Keller and DiMaggio opened the top of the eighth with singles, and Bill Dickey walked. George Selkirk then grounded into a force play at the plate, but 1B Jimmy Foxx dropped the throw for the attempted DP. This allowed DiMaggio to score the go-ahead run. Joe Gordon followed with a double driving in Dickey.
• With the clock showing 6:20, the Yankees attempted to speed up the inning while the Red Sox did just the opposite. SS-Manager Joe Cronin ordered 1B Babe Dahlgren to be intentionally passed, but Babe swung and missed the first pitch. In the meantime, Selkirk deliberately ran up the 3B line to be tagged out by C Johnny Peacock. On the second wide one, Dahlgren swung and missed again while Gordon wandered off third for the third out.
• Cronin argued that the Yankees were not playing properly. The crowd of 27,000 "added to the general confusion by showering the field with straw hats and pop bottles. This final demonstration carried the day, for in the few minutes remaining it was impossible to clear the playing field and Umpire [Cal] Hubbard, apparently holding the Boston club responsible for the delay, announced the forfeiture" of the game to the Yankees.
• Afterwards, Cronin filed a protest to the league office "on the ground that it was the Yankees who had played unfairly by deliberately running into put-outs at the plate and also trying to interfere with a perfectly legal intentional pass by having the batter swing at wild pitches."

Five days later, AL President Will Harridge upheld the protest and ordered the game to be replayed. It was rescheduled but never played because of rain. The contest had no effect on the pennant race, which New York won by 17 games over second-place Boston.

In 1943, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill that rescinded the Sunday curfew for the remainder of World War II.

Ted Williams

George Selkirk

Lou Gehrig and Babe Dahlgren

Lou Gehrig

 

Mickey Cochrane

Lou Gehrig was one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. The Yankee first-sacker pounded out:

• 534 doubles,
• 163 triples, and
• 493 HR.

Yet, his 17-year career included several instances of lost hits, both of which occurred at Griffith Stadium, Washington.

• In April 1931, Lou hit the ball into the stands with teammate Lyn Lary on base. However, the ball bounced back into the field and, when Lary saw a Senators OF catch the ball, he thought the inning was over and went from 3B to the dugout rather than complete the circuit. Gehrig was ruled out for passing Lary and credited with only a triple. Larrupin' Lou went on to tie teammate Babe Ruth for the HR title that year with 46.
• On June 29, 1934, the Yankees played an exhibition game in Norfolk VA. Gehrig was knocked unconscious by a beanball. He was taken to a local hospital where X-rays revealed no serious damage. It was feared that his streak of 1,414 consecutive games was in jeopardy. But he made the overnight trip to Washington and started at 1B as usual. In the first inning, he knocked in Frank Crosetti and Ruth with a twisting triple to left that got by Heinie Manush. In the third, Lou hit another three-bagger and scored on Myril Hoag's single. In the top of the fifth, Gehrig tripled again. Heavy winds came up when the Senators were batting in the bottom of the fifth, trailing 4-1. There was dust that sent the fans scurrying for shelter, and then rain. After a delay of more than an hour, umpires Bill McGowan and Brick Owens called the game. About 7,000 fans got rain checks, but Gehrig had his triples wiped off the books, undoubtedly the only time in MLB history that a player lost three triples to the weather. He would have tied the AL record of 3 in a game and had a chance to get a fourth to break the record.
• Lou also has the unenviable distinction of being one of three players who failed to win the MVP award after a Triple Crown season. C Mickey Cochrane, manager of the 1934 AL champion Detroit Tigers, earned the MVP crown despite Gehrig's leading the league with a .363 average, 49 HRs, and 165 RBI as the Yankees finished second, seven games behind.
• The other Triple Crown winners who failed to be MVP? Ted Williams of the Red Sox twice, 1942 (Yankees 2B Joe Gordon MVP) and 1947 (Yankees CF Joe DiMaggio MVP), and Chuck Klein of the Phillies in 1933 (Giants P Carl Hubbell MVP).

Randy Lerch had been an All-American OF/P at Cordova (CA) High School when the Phillies drafted him in the eighth round in 1973.

• Randy came up to the Phils in 1975. He had the most wins of his 11-year ML career in 1978, when he won 11. It's the last of those eleven victories that occupies us here.
• Lerch faced Pittsburgh on September 30, 1978, on the second-to-last day of the season. Philadelphia's four-game lead in the East Division at the beginning of the week had dwindled to only 1.5 over the Pirates, whom they were facing at Three Rivers Stadium. Still, one more win would clinch the division for Danny Ozark's Phillies.

Lerch got off to a shaky start.

• 1B Willie Stargell hit a grand slam in the first inning to give the Pirates a 4-1 lead.
• Lerch whacked a HR with two out and no one on in the top of the second to cut the deficit to two. Randy recalls: "I knew Willie, and it was one of those days in batting practice when I was really hitting a lot of balls out of the park, and Willie told me later on that he told the Pirates' starting P, Don Robinson, to be careful pitching to me because I was swinging the bat good in BP. Robinson responded by saying, 'Forget it, he can't hit.' And Willie told me that after the first HR, he went to the mound to talk to Robinson and said, 'You know what, I told you, this guy can hit so be careful.'"
• It was deja vu all over again when Lerch came to bat with two out and none on in the fourth and slammed another four-bagger. Stargell visited Robinson on the hill again, but this time the hurler beat Willie to the punch: "That ---- can hit!"
• Meanwhile, Randy had found his grove on the mound and held the Pirates scoreless for four straight innings. However, still trailing 4-3, Ozark sent Jose Cardenal to hit for Lerch to lead off the sixth. "It made me mad," Randy remembers. "Cardenal pinch-hit for me and the Pirates' Grant Jackson struck him out. That didn't make me a happy camper. It was something I couldn't believe because it would have given me the chance to have an all-time game. If I had done something in that situation, wow! It would have been something special. But we'll never know."
• LF Greg Luzinski smacked a three-run HR in the inning to give the Phils the lead for good. They added four in the 8th that helped them survive another four-run inning by the Pirates in the ninth.

Philadelphia clinched the East pennant but lost the NL pennant 3 games to 1 to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Willie Stargell

Greg Luzinski

Bobby Cox being ejected

Dale Scott

Ron Kulpa

Atlanta manager Bobby Cox holds the dubious distinction of having been ejected from more games than any other manager in history. His 154 ousters entering the 2010 season – his last before retirement – broke John McGraw's record.

• Although umpires can do without Bobby's tirades, they don't have the animosity toward him that they had toward Earl Weaver or Billy Martin.
• 25-year umpire Dale Scott says, "I really respect Bobby, and although I don't know if he actually likes any umpires, he respects us back."
• Scott adds: "It's a given he's going to get into his situations with us, but his players know that if there's a problem with the umpires, he'll take care of it. You'll notice with the Braves there aren't a lot of player ejections."

Scott tells the story of an incident where he gained respect for Cox.

It was a mistake by Bobby that touched off my most memorable exchange with him. A Braves batter hit a little pop fly down the RF line that my partner Ron Kulpa called foul. Bobby came storming out of the dubout to argue, to no avail.

Exasperated, he turned to me and yelled, "Come on, Sam! You know he missed it!"

Ron said, "Um, Bobby? His name is Dale." What happened next was painfully funny because all three of us were trying so hard not to laugh – the cameras were on. Several seconds went by before Bobby finally said: "Oh God, I'm sorry." I told him it was all right; I'd been called worse things. Then he deadpanned, "I'm sure you have." It was absolutely hilarious.