BEANED IN THE BIG LEAGUES

BIG MOE

     In 1942 I got beaned by Phil Marchildon of the Philadelphia Athletics, one of the hardest, wildest throwers in the game. His fast ball clipped me on the top back of my head as I ducked down and away and caromed to the screen, so I didn’t get hit flush. But I was out for a few seconds and woozier than hell and they took me out of the game, sent me to the hospital, where the doctors cleaned the cut on my head and bandaged me up with one of those things that wrap around your ears, like the guys who got head wounds in the war.

     They wanted to keep me overnight for observation, said I had a concussion. I had a pretty good headache and Rose was very upset, didn’t want me to play, but hell, I’d worked my way into some steady playing time after five years in the minors and waiting my turn behind a bunch of donkeys, I was going good, and you didn’t want to get the reputation of a guy who couldn’t play hurt or lost his courage after a beaning, because we had guys on Detroit that were waiting to take your job, you didn’t want somebody coming in and getting hot and putting you on the bench. So I talked our manager, Del Baker, who wasn’t my greatest supporter and who I didn’t care for because he never went to bat for you, was strictly a front office stooge, into playing me the next day.

     Well, in those days we didn’t wear these protective helmets, you took your life in your hands when you hit, and as I stood at the plate  I could feel my ass turning to jelly and easing out—it was like I couldn’t control my ass or my legs, they were pulling out. So I had to step out and gather myself, talk to myself, knowing everybody was watching and wondering, and force myself to keep my ass in. It was a real struggle. I took a pitch and got my bearings. Soon as you take that first pitch you’re back to being familiar with things. I literally pushed my pelvic in and sucked in my ass and moved up on the plate, and settled my legs, and worked the count, and I knocked a single between third and short.

     I was okay after that. I always knew how to get away from the ball, how to pivot on my back leg and duck, taking it on my hide. I had that confidence in my reflexes, and in all my years of playing ball that was the only time I got beaned, and I was dusted dozens of times, but I never got hit that much, even standing close to the plate.

     The guy who got hit the most, the bravest hitter I ever saw, though, was Minnie Minoso, a team mate when I played in Cuba. One of the top pitchers in the league, a very hard throwing Cuban who had a diamond in one of his front teeth, beaned Minoso on the side of the head and he went down like a sack of potatoes, and he lay there motionless. We thought he was dead. The ball park was quiet as a morgue. Minoso was a tremendous ball player and should’ve been in the big leagues years earlier, and he didn’t move. The docs gave him the smelling salts for about a minute and suddenly he jumped up and ran down to first base. He stole second and third and next time up he stood on top of the plate, like he always did, leading the league in getting hit by pitches, and drilled a double off the wall.

     Every time you start to think you’re tough, you look at a guy like Minoso, and it humbles you.

(Next Sunday installment: The Kid gets beaned)