|
OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
 |
|
|
 |
One Hundred Years Later:
A Remembrance of Mel Ott
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
March 2 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mel Ott, my boyhood idol. As a tribute to my old hero, I’d like to shine a bit of light on an injustice suffered by Ott, which has faded into the mists of time.
Ott came to the New York Giants in 1925 as a 16-year-old. He sat on the bench for most of his first three seasons before blossoming as a slugger in 1928, hitting 18 homers.
Now we come to the waning days of the 1929 season. As the third-place Giants and fifth-place Philadelphia Phillies readied for a meaningless doubleheader on Oct, 5, the next-to-last day of the season, Ott and the Phils’ Chuck Klein were tied for the league lead in home runs with 42.
In the first game Klein homered off Carl Hubbell in his first time at bat to take a 43-42 lead in home runs. Ott had one hit in three at bats.
In the second game Ott singled his first time at bat. After that manager Burt Shotton (who would later manage the Brooklyn Dodgers) ordered the Phillie pitchers to walk Ott. He was given what the archives call “semi-intentional” walks rather than let him have swings at hittable pitches. He wound up with five walks.
His last time at bat Ott came up with the Giants ahead, 12-2, and the bases loaded. With the count 3-1 Ott actually reached out of the strike zone to swing, and failed to connect with a pitch. Then, on a 3-2 count, the Phils’ pitcher threw the ball wide enough so that Ott couldn’t reach it. He was given an intentional walk with the bases loaded. The Giants won, 13-2.
The game was played in the Polo Grounds. We would think the home Giants fans would have set up blood-curdling screams at the injustice against their guy, but it is more than likely most people weren’t clued into the Phils’ strategy and the tie between Ott and Klein. Statistics weren’t as freely available to fans in those days, nor were games broadcast.
The Giants had a final game the next day in Boston against the Braves. To give Ott the possibility of more at bats, Giants manager John McGraw moved him up to bat first. He had a single. (I don’t know how many times he came to bat because the type in the microfilms edition of the New York Times of Oct. 7, 1929 is too small to decipher.)
It is of note that in 1932 Klein and Ott then tied for the home run lead with 38.
According to the records, Ott was only the third man in history to be walked with the bases loaded. The others were Napoleon Lajoie of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1901 and Del Bissonette of the Brookyn Dodgers in 1925. Neither was battling for home run leadership at the time.
The memory of his misfortune stayed with Ott. It influenced one of his decisions as New York Giants manager. On July 23, 1944 the Giants were leading the Chicago Cubs, 10-7 in the eighth inning of the second game of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds when Bill (Swish) Nicholson came to bat with the bases loaded and none out.
Nicholson had hit three homers in a 7-4 Cubs victory in the first game and had hit another earlier in the second. So Ott had him walked on four pitches, forcing in a run to shave the Giants’ lead to 10-8. The Cubs went on to score two more times in the inning for a 10-10 tie, but the Giants came back with two runs in their half of the eighth and won, 12-10.
(There have been two intentional bases-loaded walks since then-to Barry Bonds of San Francisco in 1998 and Josh Hamilton of Texas last year-in situations where managers were successful in protecting a lead).
Much has been made of the nostalgia about the Dodgers by old Brooklynites. The New York Giants have faded into the gloaming so there are probably only a a dozen or so people left who treasure the days of Ott, Carl Hubbell, Harry Danning, Jo Jo Moore and Bill Terry (okay, an exaggeration).
Here are some Mel Ott tidbits to mark the 100-year anniversary:
In his first significant contribution, Ott, 17, played five innings in a 17-3 Giants romp over the Boston Braves, Sept. 3, 1926, and went 3-for-3, and stole a base.
On July 27, 1927, he hit his first home run, an inside-the-park homer when Cubs center fielder Hack Wilson misplayed what should have been a single. It would be the only inside-the-park home run of the 511 Ott hit in his 1926-1947 big league career, all with the Giants.
After he ended his association with the Giants, he broadcast national games on the Mutual network in 1955 and Detroit Tigers games with Van Patrick from 1956 to 1958. He died on Nov. 21, 1958 from injuries suffered in a car crash in Mississippi outside his home in the New Orleans area. He was 49.
In the 1989 baseball fantasy movie, “Field
of Dreams” he was one of the old ball players who walked
out of the cornfield. In 2006 he was one of four sluggers--along
with Hank Greenberg, Mickey Mantle and Roy Campanella-honored
on a postage stamp.
The Giants faithful remembers his uniform No. 4 and the odd way
he cocked his right leg before swinging and hitting a pitch (usually
into the upper right field deck at the Polo Grounds).
Ogden Nash, the humorist, wrote a poem honoring ball players entitled, “Lineup for Yesterday.”
It included:
O is for Ott
Of the restless right foot
When he leaned on the pellet,
The pellet stayed put.
©2009 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted March 9, 2009.
TO ACCESS STAN ISAACS'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ISAACS
ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Stan Isaacs. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Stan's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|