A Bench That Would Not Stop Hitting

A Bench That Would Not Stop Hitting (1926)

Brooklyn trailed 6-3 at Baker Bowl going to the ninth and scored nine. Five pinch hitters delivered, and Dick Cox singled twice in the inning. One of them was Moose Clabaugh, who had hit 62 home runs for Tyler of the East Texas League that summer. He doubled off the right field wall. It was the only hit he ever got in the majors. Brooklyn shipped him back to Texas, where he hit for fourteen more years.

The Game Nobody Forgot (1934)

Satchel Paige drove all night from Pittsburgh and slept in his car outside Yankee Stadium until the batboy woke him. Then he pitched nine innings against Slim Jones of the Philadelphia Stars at a Harlem benefit doubleheader. Paige struck out 12. Jones struck out 9. The umpires called it 1-1 when the light gave out. Jones was twenty-one, in the only great season he would have. He was gone four years later at twenty-five, and this afternoon is the reason people still say his name.

One Hit, Two Baserunners, One Loser (1965)

Sandy Koufax retired all 27 Cubs at Dodger Stadium and struck out 14, still tied for the most in a perfect game. The forgotten man is Bob Hendley. He carried a no-hitter into the seventh and finished with a one-hitter, and the run that beat him was unearned, scored without an official at-bat or an RBI: walk, sacrifice, stolen base, throwing error. Lou Johnson's bloop double was the only hit either team got. Five days later Hendley beat Koufax in Chicago.

The Last Man Without a Helmet (1979)

Baltimore beat Boston 16-4, the kind of score that erases a game. Somewhere in it, Red Sox catcher Bob Montgomery went 1 for 2 in the last game of a ten-year career spent behind Carlton Fisk. He was also doing something nobody has done since: batting in a soft cap with a plastic liner sewn inside, allowed by a grandfather clause for veterans who had never worn a helmet. His cap is in Cooperstown now. An era ended in a blowout and nobody knew it.