A reader needs help finding some information. She writes:
In Aug 1962, my Dad (Bruno), brother (Tom) two uncles (Sal and Dominic) and a cousin (Nicky) went to the Old Timer’s Game at Yankee Stadium. (Sounds like a casting call for the “Sopranos”). Anyway, Nicky had his face buried in a hotdog when Joe D. stepped up the plate. Joe was 48 years old and looked great.
He hit a home run and the stadium erupted! Fans were standing on their seats going berserk. Tom said the yelling was deafening. My cousin Nicky, still more interested in his hotdog, looks at my brother and asks “Hey Tom, when’s Joe D coming up to bat????”
Famous old family story — we still laugh at Nicky for being such a dope.
Anyway — here’s the controversy. My brother, who was there, claims the homerun Joe D hit was “inside the park”. My husband who was 9 years old at the time was watching the game on TV — he claims the HR was over the left field wall.
They argue about this every time they get together which is about twice a year.
How can I find out who’s right? I tried to find stats for Old Timers’ Games on the net, but no dice.
Thought you might know…
If you know anything about this event, please leave a comment here.
Wasn’t DiMaggio retired in ’62? Could this be from an Old Timers game? I wish they still put those on, was always one of my favorite things to do with baseball.
Doh, completely missed the reference to the Old Timers game in the post, time for coffee…
Holy crap! I can’t believe the timing of this. A couple weeks ago my aunt was cleaning out her storage area and found 3 Yankee yearbooks (’60, ’62 and ’63) which she so graciously gave to me. In the ’63 book there’s a page on the ’62 Old Timers’ Day with a pic of Joe D.
The caption reads:
Always the big event at Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium is the introduction of the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio. Here, wearing his familiar old (retired) No. 5 uniform, he is seen running out to greet other diamond heroes to the tumultous applause of the crowd. Later, in the abbreviated game, Joe hit one to deep center and came all the way around for an inside-the-park home run.
That’s what great about bringing together people with diverse information. Someone knows the answer!
That was awesome. Seriously.
Hooray Internet! 🙂
Thanks to baseballmusings.com for getting the info to me. I immediately called my brother (who always maintained Joe D hit an inside the park homer at the Old Timer’s Game in ’62 and he was thrilled! Now I have to break the news to my husband who argued it was a homer over the left field wall!
P.S. My brother also said that whoever was playing center field that day tripped when Joe’s homer came his way, and by the time he got up and ran after the ball, Joe was already rounding 2nd base. Then, the centerfielder threw the ball home, but it was a pretty weak throw, so Joe made it!
I believe in 1973 they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of Yankee Stadium, and were playing the last Old-timers game in the old configuration. Instead of having a team of old Yankees and old opponents, they just had old Yankees back that day and split them into two squads. Whitey Ford ended up pitching to Mickey Mantle. Ford grooved him a bunch of pitches, and Mantle pulled them foul until he got one he could really hammer and drove it into the left field seats. That’s the most memorable moment from old timers games for me. That and the interview Rizzuto did with Stengel during a rain delay before a game. Phil asked Casey some question and Casey went on for 20 minutes about bunting on Astroturf. It was hilarious.
The Snuffy Stirnweiss Story concerns an issue that arose in a game between The New York Yankees and The Boston Red Sox, played on September 30, 1945 in Yankee Stadium.
Up to the time of that game Stirnweiss had never led the league in batting during the 1945 season. He trailed Tony Cuccinello of the Chicago White Sox who led the league with a batting average of .308; Stirnweiss was at .306. In a game on September 29, 1945 Stirnweiss got three hits, and then again in the September 30th game he got three more hits to move his average to .3085 leaving Cuccinello at .3077. Cuccinello’s last two games in Chicago were rained out.
In his article in The New York Times on October 1, 1945, James P. Dawson wrote: “Pounding two Red Sox pitchers for three hits in five times at bat, George (Snuffy) Stirnweiss won the unofficial batting championship of the American League.
Stirnweiss got the final hit he needed in the eighth inning to bring him out ahead of Cuccinello in the batting title race. That hit rounded out a tremendously successful season for the Yankee 2nd baseman. He also led the league in stolen bases with 33, hits, 195, runs 107, times at bat 632, and triples 21, to tie the record set by Home Run Baker in 1912.
Reporting on that same game and the achievements of Stirnweiss, the Baseball Library stated: “Stirnweiss had two hits and was GIVEN a third when the New York official scorer reversed an error ruling. The implication was that Stirnweiss was GIVEN the batting title by a biased New York official scorer and without having been GIVEN a hit, Stirnweiss would not have won the batting title.
The Sporting News on October 4, 1945 reported these facts concerning that Stirnweiss error/hit: “There was some question about Stirnweiss’s second hit on the last day of the season, a sharp rap to Jack Tobin, third baseman of the Red Sox. It was at first scored as an error, but Official Scorer, Bert Gumpert, changed the decision within a minute and the press box unanimously concurred in the correction.”
The Sporting News report on the game stands as a refutation of the incident as reported in Baseball Library. Stirnweiss was not “given” a hit, he earned it.
It is not likely that after 61 years have passed that Baseball Library is going to print a retraction despite the evidence of what actually happened in the game as written by James P. Dawson and the Sporting News.
Apparently no one at the New York Yankees cares either, despite several attempts to contact them. It’s a “dead” issue with them; they are more concerned with the prospects of Derek Jeter’s battle with Mauer of the Minnesota who has led the league in batting for the entire season to this point.
But this long-time New York Yankee fan for more than 65 years, during which I saw several games at Yankee Stadium in 1941 when Joe DiMaggio was in the middle of his 56 game hitting streak. I was also present at that last game of the 1945 season during which the Snuffy Stirnweiss incident described above incurred.
When I was in the Air Force in 1946, stationed in Washington, D.C., I was at a game between the Washington Senators and The New York Yankees where I had the great pleasure to meet Snuffy and took a picture of him which sits on my desk to this day. I also remember that Snuffy died a tragic death at age 39 in a train wreck in New Jersey where he lived.
Snuffy has always been my baseball hero and always will be, the Baseball Library, notwithstanding.
Patrick Mackin
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