September 9, 1928: Urban Shocker dies of heart failure. He was only 37 years old and, technically, still an active pitcher in baseball.
Today, a man with a name like "Urban Shocker" would be welcomed with open arms in New York sports. And every rapper would ask himself why he didn't think of that for a stage name. (New Orleans-based rapper Vyshonn King Miller named himself "Silkk the Shocker" -- instead of going with, oh, I don't know, "King Miller.")
He was of French-Canadian descent, born Urbain Jacques Shockcor in Cleveland, on September 22, 1890. He threw a breaking ball and a spitball with great success, and ended up as 1 of the 17 active pitchers who was allowed to continue throwing the spitball after the 1920 season.
In 1914, pitching for the Ottawa Senators of the Canadian League, he went 20-8; in 1915, 19-10. That led the New York Yankees to sign him, but he appeared in only 12 games, going 4-3, before going back to Canada, loaned to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League. (Both the Senators and the Maple Leafs would have their names borrowed by hockey teams that survived them.) There, he went 15-3 with a 1.31 ERA.
He went 8-5 for the Yankees in 1917, but the new manager, Miller Huggins, had little faith in him. On January 22, 1918, the Yankees traded Shocker, Fritz Maisel, Les Nunamaker, Nick Cullop, Joe Gedeon and $15,000 to the St. Louis Browns for Eddie Plank and Del Pratt.
From 1918 to 1924, Shocker went 126-80 for the Browns -- an average of 18-11. He won 27 games in 1921, leading the major leagues, and 24 in 1922, with 149 strikeouts, which doesn't sound like much today, but it was good enough to lead both Leagues that season.
Shocker's absence nearly cost the Yankees the Pennant in '22, may have cost them the Pennant in '20 (20-10) and '24 (16-13), and may have been a reason why they lost the World Series in '21 and '22. Never mind the other players the Yankees gave up: Getting rid of Shocker was a mistake.
What about what they got in return? Plank was a genuine Hall-of-Fame pitcher, with a career record of 326-194 before the trade. But he was 42, and never threw another professional pitch, retiring because the stress of the game had given him stomach problems. (The stress must have gotten worse: He died of a stroke in 1926, just 8 years after the trade.)
Pratt was a good 2nd baseman, and led the AL in RBIs in 1916. In 1920, he attained career highs while with the Yankees in batting .314 with 108 RBIs. But the Yankees traded him, anyway -- to the Red Sox for pitcher Waite Hoyt and catcher Wally Schang. That was a great trade.
In his 1979 book This Date In New York Yankees History, Nathan Salant called trading Shocker away the worst trade in Yankee history to that point. But there are 2 reasons why it isn't that bad: The fact that it was, essentially, Shocker for Hoyt (a Hall-of-Famer) and Schang (an All-Star-caliber player, had there been an All-Star Game back then); and the fact that the Yankees did get Shocker back from the Browns, on December 17, 1924, sending them another star pitcher, Bullet Joe Bush, and 2 other guys.
He was only 12-12 in 1925, as the Yankees were in transition: The hitting stars of their Pennant streak of 1921-23 had stopped hitting. They were replaced with new stars, like Lou Gehrig, Earle Combs and Tony Lazzeri, joining Babe Ruth. In 1926, Shocker went 19-11, and the Yankees won the Pennant. In 1927, the year the Yankees became known as "Murderers' Row" and "The Greatest Team Ever," Shocker went 18-6.
But he had a swollen heart, causing him constant pain. Supposedly, his condition was so severe, he had to sleep either sitting or standing up. He was too ill to appear in the 1927 World Series, and appeared in only 1 game in 1928, on May 30, pitching 2 innings in a mop-up role, as the Yankees lost to the Washington Senators, 5-0.
Like many people before him with either a bad heart or bad lungs, he went to Denver, Colorado, thinking that the thin mountain air would be good for him. He asked the Yankees for his release, and they gave it to him. On August 6, 1928, Shocker appeared in an exhibition tournament in Denver, and pitched in a game against a team from Cheyenne, Wyoming, but fared poorly. Shortly thereafter, he contracted pneumonia, and was hospitalized shortly thereafter.
The Yankees began September 9, 1928 half a game behind the Philadelphia Athletics. The Yankees had 19 games left in the regular season; The A's, 18. And they were about to face each other in a 4-game series at Yankee Stadium, starting with a Sunday doubleheader that brought 85,265 fans to the big ballyard in The Bronx. With the Stadium's triple-decked stands not curled around the right-field foul pole until 1936, newspaper accounts estimated that another 5,000 people were able to watch the games from rooftops on River Avenue.
The Yankees won the opener, 5-0. George Pipgras allowed 9 hits, but kept a shutout. Then the Yankees won the nightcap, 7-3, coming back from 3-0 down at the 7th inning stretch to score 2 runs in the 7th, and a grand slam by Bob Meusel meant 4 in the 8th. Hoyt beat Eddie Rommel, a knuckleballer about to turn 41.
Over the 2 games, Babe Ruth went 1-for-6 with 2 walks, and Lou Gehrig went 3-for-6 with a walk and an RBI. For the A's, Jimmie Foxx went 1-for-8, and Mickey Cochrane went 1-for-7 with a walk. With the A's at the end of long and glorious careers, Eddie Collins got a hit as a pinch-hitter in the 1st game, while Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, both available, did not get into either game. Cobb played in the last game of the series, on September 11, a 5-3 Yankee win, popping up to shortstop as a pinch-hitter for Max Bishop. It was his last major-league appearance. Speaker had made his last on August 30. Collins played 16 more games over the 1928, '29 and '30 seasons, and retired.
The Yankees ended the day a game and a half ahead of the A's. They roared into their clubhouse, and were ready to celebrate, when they saw Mark Roth, the team's traveling secretary, standing by a telephone, and looking sad. He told them he had just heard that Shocker was dead. The players knew Shocker was sick, but they had no idea how sick. They ended the season 2 1/2 games ahead of the A's, and won the World Series again.
Urban Shocker compiled a record of 187-117 with an ERA of 3.17, and an ERA+ of 124. He's not in the Hall of Fame, but he should be.
*
September 9, 1928 was a Sunday. These other baseball games were played that day:
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Giants, 3-2 at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers were actually called the Brooklyn Robins from 1914 to 1931, while Wilbert Robinson was their manager. In this game, Jake Flowers singled Babe Herman home with the winning run in the bottom of the 9th. Dazzy Vance, the best pitcher the Dodger franchise ever had until Sandy Koufax found his control, went the distance for the win.
* A doubleheader was split at Griffith Stadium in Washington. The Boston Red Sox won the 1st game, 3-2. The Washington Senators won the 2nd game, 5-3.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 10-1 at League Park in Cleveland.
* The St. Louis Browns beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-6 at Navin Field (later renamed Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium).
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 2-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Guy Bush, later to become famous as the pitcher who gave up Babe Ruth's 714th and last career home run, pitched a 2-hit shutout.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 8-7 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The Cards scored 5 runs in the bottom of the 7th, but the Bucs scored 5 in the top of the 8th.
* And the Boston Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies took the day off. They didn't have a choice: The 2 previous days, they'd played at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, but, until 1933, playing a professional sporting event on a Sunday was illegal in Pennsylvania. Come to think of it, 1928 was also the year Sunday ball was legalized in Massachusetts, so they couldn't move a game they wanted to play on this day to Braves Field in Boston, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment