July 19, 1942: Pete Reiser of the Brooklyn Dodgers suffers the worst injury of his career, one of many that may have kept him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Dodgers were playing a doubleheader with the St. Louis Cardinals at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Despite a home run from shortstop Harold "Pee Wee" Reese, the Dodgers lost the opener, 8-5. Whitey Kurowski hit a home run for the Cards, and a rookie left fielder named Stan Musial went 2-for-4.
The nightcap ends even worse for the Dodgers. In the bottom of the 11th inning, Enos Slaughter hits a long drive to center field. Reiser goes after it, and catches it, but crashes into the wall, which, like all outfield walls in those days, is not padded. The impact not only knocked him out, it caused him to drop the ball. Slaughter got all the way around the bases. He was credited with an inside-the-park home run, and the Cardinals won, 7-6.
Harold Patrick Reiser was born on March 17, 1919 in St. Louis. An outfielder, he was nicknamed "Pistol Pete" after a film cowboy, and the name "Pete" stuck. (Basketball star Pete Maravich would also later be nicknamed Pistol Pete.) He was good enough that Branch Rickey, then the general manager of the Cardinals, started scouting Reiser from the age of 12.
Reiser signed with the Cardinals, but in 1938, he was among a group of minor league players who were declared free agents by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The Dodgers signed Reiser. Rickey would become their general manager in 1942, but would not get the best out of him as he'd hoped.
He reached the Dodgers in 1940, and in 1941, he led the National League in with a .343 batting average, 39 doubles, 17 triples, 299 total bases, 117 runs scored, and, though almost nobody knew about these stats at the time (though Rickey knew about on-base percentage), a .558 slugging percentage, a .964 OPS and a 164 OPS+. Though these figures did not lead the League, he had a .406 on-base percentage, 14 home runs, and 76 RBIs. He was named to the All-Star Game.
The Dodgers won the Pennant, their 1st in 21 years, and had the top 3 players in the NL's Most Valuable Player voting: 1st baseman Dolph Camilli (his 34 homers and 120 RBIs led the League), center fielder Reiser, and pitcher Whitlow Wyatt (he went 22-10). They lost the World Series to the New York Yankees, but they were a young, scrappy, exciting team that had already had a taste of glory. The future looked bright.
Especially for Reiser: He was only 22 years old. His manager at the time, Leo Durocher, would later manage Willie Mays on the New York Giants. Mays was his favorite player out of all those he managed in a career that lasted from 1938 to 1972, but, comparing him to Reiser, he said, "Pete had more power than Willie, lefthanded and righthanded both. Willie had everything. Pete had everything but luck."
But he his great speed meant that he frequently couldn't stop when making catches in center field, and crashed into the outfield wall. Outfield walls weren't padded then. After his July 19, 1942 injury, he only missed 4 games, and kept going. Then, on August 2, again in the 2nd game of a doubleheader, a 7-6 loss to the Chicago Cubs at Ebbets Field, he again knocked himself out by crashing into the center field wall.
He was stretchered off. My grandmother was a Dodger fan, living in Queens, and listening to the game on the radio, and she never forgot it. She told me that Tex Rickards, the Dodgers' public-address announcer, nicknamed after George "Tex" Rickard the boxing promoter, was "a real Brooklyn character." Once, when fans down the foul lines had draped their jackets over the railings, the umpires deemed it a distraction. They got Rickards' attention, told him what the problem was, and he announced, "Will da fans sittin' down the foul lines please remove deir clothing?"
Grandma figured that Rickards must have asked someone why Reiser was leaving the game, and he was told, "He don't feel good." So he announced, and it could be heard over the radio, "Your attention, please: Reiser has to leave the game, because he don't feel good!" The few thousand fans in attendance cracked up. Grandma was sure that Dodger radio announcer Walter "Red" Barber, a Southerner but a very cultured man, would have a fit. And he did.
This time, Reiser missed 6 games. He was batting .379 at the time of the 1st injury, and .343 at the time of the 2nd. He finished the season at .310, although his 20 stolen bases led the League. The Dodgers won 104 games, but the Cardinals won 106. No Divisions or Wild Cards then: "Dem Bums" did not see the postseason, and Reiser's injury-induced slump may have been the biggest reason why.
Reiser was drafted into the U.S. Army, and missed the 1943, '44 and '45 seasons fighting World War II. While playing for an Army team, he hurt his shoulder. He later said: "It wasn't as serious as the head injuries, but it did more to end my career. The shoulder kept popping out of place, more bone chips developed, and there was constant pain in the arm and shoulder."
When he came back in 1946, he again led the NL in steals, with a career-high 34. Jackie Robinson became his teammate the next season, and we associate him with stolen bases, but he only topped this figure once, with 37 in 1949. But he only played in 122 games, and the Dodgers lost a Playoff for the Pennant to the Cardinals.
In 1947, with Robinson integrating the team, the Dodgers won the Pennant. But injuries limited Reiser to just 110 games, though he still batted .309. On June 4, in a 9-4 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Ebbets Field, he crashed into the wall again. This time, teammates who tended to his head injury got blood from his scalp all over their uniforms. He was carried off the field, and even administered the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He missed 34 games, returning to action on July 12.
In Game 4 of the World Series, he was sent up to pinch-hit in the bottom of the 9th, even though he had an injured ankle. Rather than risk losing the game to his hitting, Yankee manager Bucky Harris granted him the respect of ordering that he be intentionally walked. Eddie Miksis was sent in to pinch-run for him, and he scored the winning run. But, again, the Yankees won the Series.
Finally, in 1948, Rickey had enough, and padded the outfield wall at Ebbets Field. Other teams followed suit. In 1949, Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler ordered all teams to install "warning tracks" made of dirt around their outfield fences, to let outfielders know they were getting close to the wall.
But the damage was done: Injuries limited Reiser to 64 games in 1948. With Duke Snider ready to take over in center field, Reiser was traded to the Boston Braves. He played for them in 1949 and '50, for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1951, and the Cleveland Indians in 1952, but couldn't take it anymore, and retired at the age of 33, with a .295 lifetime batting average.
Reiser managed in the minors for several years, winning the 1959 Minor League Manager of the Year Award from The Sporting News, for managing a Dodger farm team, the Green Bay Blue Jays, to the Pennant in the Class B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League (a.k.a. "The Three-I League," equivalent to today's Class A). He served as a coach on Walter Alston's Los Angeles Dodgers staff from 1960 to 1964, including finally getting a World Series ring in 1963.
In 1965, he was managing the Dodgers' top farm team, the Spokane Indians of the Pacific Coast League, when he had a heart attack, and had to quit. His replacement, again, was Duke Snider. Reiser later served as a coach under Durocher with the Cubs and the Houston Astros, and with the California Angels under Lefty Phillips in 1970 and '71.
On October 25, 1981, Pete Reiser died of respiratory disease in Palm Springs, California. He was only 62 years old. Earlier that year, baseball historians Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. They used what they called "Smoky Joe Wood Syndrome" to explain why a truly exceptional player whose career was curtailed by injury, despite not having had career statistics that would quantitatively rank him with the all-time greats, should nonetheless be included on their list.
In addition to Wood and Reiser, they applied this to Dizzy Dean and Herb Score -- but not Ken Hubbs, Tony Conigliaro or Mark Fidrych. And, of course, the book was written before the arrivals in the major leagues of Dwight Gooden, Eric Davis, Bo Jackson, Kerry Wood and Stephen Strasburg.
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July 19, 1942 was a Sunday. In addition to the Dodger-Cardinal doubleheader, these baseball games were played, all doubleheaders:
* The New York Yankees swept the Chicago White Sox, 9-2 and 12-0 at Yankee Stadium. Hank Borowy went the distance to win the opener, backed by home runs from Joe DiMaggio and Red Rolfe. Red Ruffing pitched a 4-hit shutout in the nightcap, and helped his own cause with a home run.
* The New York Giants split with the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Reds won the opener, 6-3. The Giants won the nightcap, 4-3.
* The Cleveland Indians swept the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in Boston. The Indians won the 1st game, 10-7. Jeff Heath's double in the top of the 12th started a 3-run rally. The 2nd game was called due to darkness after 7 innings, with the Indians ahead, 7-0. Mel Harder had a 3-hit shutout going. Overall, Heath went 4-for-10 with 3 RBIs. Ted Williams was injured and missed both games, but would still end up winning the Triple Crown that season.
* There was a split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Detroit Tigers won the 1st game, 2-1. The Philadelphia Athletics won the 2nd game, 4-3.
* In a battle between the AL's 2 perennial losers at Griffith Stadium in Washington, the St. Louis Browns swept the Washington Senators, 5-3 and 6-3. In a parody of what was once said about George Washington, the baseball team was said to be "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." St. Louis, a city built on leather and brewing, was said to be "First in shoes, first in booze, and last in the American League."
But the manpower drain of World War II would hurt these teams less than most, since they had little to lose. The Browns would win their only Pennant in 1944, and the Senators finished only 1 game out in 1945, their best performance between 1933 and 1965 (by which point they were the Minnesota Twins, and the Browns were the Baltimore Orioles).
* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept the Boston Braves at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, 8-7 and 9-0. The 2nd game was called due to darkness after 8 innings.
* There was a split at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Philadelphia Phillies won the 1st game, 8-5. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 8-4.
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