The Wrong Number

The number everybody quotes on Pete Gray is .218. It's the wrong number.

Look at 11 instead. Eleven strikeouts in 234 at-bats in 1945, swinging a 35-ounce bat with one arm. Nobody was throwing a fastball past him. What finally caught up to him was the changeup, because once that bat started moving there was no calling it back, and infielders learned to creep in and take away his bunt.

He lost the right arm at six, caught in the spokes of a produce truck wheel in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. He had been right-handed. He taught himself to hit from the other side, then invented a way to play the outfield that nobody had seen before: catch it, tuck the glove under the stump, roll the ball across his chest into his bare hand, throw. One motion, while the runner kept running.

The honest version of 1945 includes the part nobody likes. More than 500 big leaguers were in the service, rosters were thin, and the Browns knew a one-armed outfielder sold tickets. Some of his teammates said so out loud. Both things are true at once. He was there partly because of the gate, and he was also good enough that Memphis had handed him a league MVP the year before on a .333 average and 68 stolen bases.

Between games he went to Army hospitals and rehabilitation centers and sat with men who had come home missing arms and legs and had no idea what came next. He never called any of it courage. He said courage belonged to the men overseas. He just showed up and let them watch him work.