The Man Who Knew Exactly What He Was Doing

There are two kinds of players who get thrown out of a ballgame. The ones who lose it, and the ones who know exactly what they're doing.

Ted Simmons was the second kind. On May 27, 1978, the Cardinals had lost 13 of 14 and were down a run to the first-place Cubs in the ninth. Bruce Sutter came in to close it. Sutter got ahead 0-2, tried to bury the split, and left it up. Simmons hit it 400 feet to tie the game.

Plate umpire Paul Runge said Simmons tipped his helmet at him crossing the plate and added two words: "Take that." Simmons said he never opened his mouth. Runge ran him anyway, and admitted afterward there was no cursing involved, only that he'd been shown up. St. Louis filed a formal protest with the National League. Ken Boyer's argument was that Runge's only job on that play was to watch a man touch home plate.

None of which should surprise anyone who knew what Simmons was. Six years earlier, at 22, he refused the Cardinals' contract offer and played into July of 1972 without one, the first player to do it. Had he finished the season unsigned, the union had its test case against the reserve clause. Baseball's own counsel told the Cardinals to sign him and stop it. They did, in a hurry, that July. Three years later Andy Messersmith went the distance and free agency arrived.

A man willing to spend half a season as a legal weapon against his own employer was not going to swallow a bad strike zone quietly. Cooperstown took until 2020 to figure him out, and when it did, it let him in the same year as Marvin Miller.