The Packers Go Inside the Walls

The Packers Go Inside the Walls (1915)

On an 89 degree afternoon, the Kansas City Packers of the Federal League became the first major league club to play inside a prison. Every inmate was in the stands except eight in solitary. The prison pitcher, a barber doing two years for mail fraud, went all nine and gave up 23 runs. His team's only run came on a steal of home, which the Kansas City Star headlined "Their Lone Run a Theft." Weeks later he made parole. At season's end the Packers shipped their uniforms and gloves to the men they had beaten.

Seventeen at Seventeen (1936)

Bob Feller was an Iowa high school senior who had never pitched in the minors. At League Park, with his parents in the stands, he struck out 17 Athletics, breaking Rube Waddell's 28-year-old American League record and tying Dizzy Dean's major league mark. Asked about it, he said, "What are you going to do if you pitch the ball and they can't hit it?" Then he went home to finish twelfth grade, no longer eligible to play for the school team.

Boots Is Born (1942)

Lennie Merullo's wife delivered a boy at five in the morning in Boston. He had ridden a bus overnight from New York and played both ends of a doubleheader. In the second inning of the nightcap he muffed a grounder, fumbled a relay, then booted two more. Four errors in one inning, tying a record that has stood since 1888. The Braves rookie making his first big league start that day was Warren Spahn. The Chicago headline: "'Boots' Is Born, Merullo Boots Four." The boy kept it for life.

The Pitch He Let Go (1972)

In the first inning at Wrigley, Roberto Clemente let a Fergie Jenkins pitch go by without swinging. He told a teammate later he had done it on purpose. In the seventh, tied 3 to 3, Jenkins came back to the same spot, and Clemente drove it to center for a two-run homer. It was the 240th home run of his career and the last one. There were 4,418 people there to see it.