Kansas City baseball trivia
Courtesy of Charlie O. Finley.
A few weeks ago, I explored some of the strange things that have happened in Major League history. This week, we look at some of the oddball occurrences surrounding the history of Kansas City baseball.
Before the Athletics moved to Kansas City, owner Connie Mack had his eye on a pitching prospect named Lou Brissie. Mack and Brissie reached an agreement that Brissie would pitch for the Athletics after he completed college. World War II interrupted those plans and while Brissie was fighting in Italy, he was struck by artillery shrapnel which shattered his tibia and fibula into more than 30 pieces. Doctors wanted to amputate the leg, but Brissie insisted on keeping it. Brissie endured 23 operations and months of therapy. Mack honored his agreement and signed Brissie to a contract.
He was assigned to Class AA Savanah for the 1947 season and went 23 and 5 with a 1.91 ERA and a league-leading 278 strikeouts. The New York Giants offered Mack $50,000 for Brissie, which Mack turned down. Brissie made his major league debut on September 27, 1947, against the New York Yankees, on Babe Ruth Day, nonetheless. Brissie earned his first major league win early in the 1948 season against Ted Williams and the Red Sox. Brissie pitched for 7 seasons with the Athletics and Indians. His best year came in 1949, when he went 16-11 and made his only All-Star appearance. After his playing days ended, Brissie worked as a scout and as the National Director of the American Legion baseball program. A true American hero, Lou Brissie passed away on November 25, 2013, at the age of 89.
Casey Stengel’s brother, Grant, was a Kansas City cabbie who used to ferry fans and sportswriters to Municipal Stadium.
Charlie Finley installed the first pitch clock in 1965. The clock was set for 20 seconds to help umpires enforce the rule of the day.
Finley once gave a tour of Municipal Stadium to a young fan and opened a door that led to the outfield. The duo wandered onto the playing field, in the middle of a game. Play had to be stopped while they left.
Harvey, the mechanical rabbit who supplied baseballs to home plate umpires in Kansas City and Oakland, finally met his end on April 24, 1971. Cause of death was listed as mechanical failure. Some wiseacre at the Oakland Coliseum laid Harvey on a table in a funeral pose, complete with real white lilies.
Among visiting players with at least 100 at-bats, the two with the highest batting averages in Kansas City are Rod Carew at .372 and Ted Williams at .371.
There is some debate about who hit the longest home run in Municipal history. One of the longest homers in stadium history was Jerry Stahl’s 503-foot blast on May 11, 1966. Only 2,730 were in attendance that day as the A’s beat the Red Sox 6-to-5.
The A’s entered the bottom of the ninth down 4-to-2. Mike Hershberger led off with a single. Stahl followed with his bomb onto Brooklyn Avenue off former teammate Jose Santiago to tie the score.
George Scott drove home a run in the top of the tenth to give Boston the lead. Billy Bryan led off the bottom of the inning with a double. Ed Charles then plated pinch runner Ossie Chavarria with a single. Charles stole second and after a Jose Tartabull lineout, Bert Campaneris stroked a single to score Charles with the game-winner.
Stahl made his debut with KC in 1964 and played for four teams over ten seasons before hanging it up in 1974.
I’ve seen several writeups about Bob Cerv hitting a 528-foot clout into the left field bleachers on May 16, 1958, which would take the top spot. Other contenders were Frank Howard who blasted a 516-foot shot to center field on July 30, 1965, and Harry “Suitcase” Simpson, who cranked a 512-foot shot onto Brooklyn Avenue on June 24, 1956. Four 500-foot home runs in the same stadium? That’s impressive.
The first home run hit in KC Athletics history was on opening day, April 12, 1955, at Municipal in front of a crowd of 32,147.
Bill Wilson hit an eighth-inning solo shot off Van Fletcher of the Tigers, part of a 6-2 Athletic victory.
This was part of a big day for centerfielder Wilson who went 3 for 3 with 3 runs scored, including the first in KC Athletics history. He had the first hit, a second-inning double off Ned Garver, then scored the first run on a Joe DeMaestri single.
For Wilson, from Central City, Nebraska, 1955 was his final year in the big leagues. He played in 98 games and hit .223. He only had 62 hits, but 15 of them were home runs and 12 were doubles. He played in the minor leagues through the end of the 1961 season before calling it a career.
Ewell Blackwell pitched three scoreless innings to earn the save. Alex Kellner picked up the win.
Orlando Peña had a non-descript career with the Athletics but his entire career is kind of fascinating. A slightly built (5’11 and 155 pounds) right-handed pitcher, Peña appeared in 427 career games over a 14-year career that spanned three decades. He could start (93 career starts) or finish (155 games finished with 40 career saves). He threw 1,202 career innings with an ERA of 3.71 for eight teams.
In the seventh inning of an April 24, 1964, game against Washington at Municipal, Peña gave up a leadoff single to Chuck Hinton. After getting Bill Skowron on a flyball, Peña faced Jim King. As he delivered a pitch to King, Peña blew and popped a large bubble gum bubble. King hit into a 4-3 double play which brought an enraged manager Gil Hodges out of the Washington dugout. Hodges complained to home plate umpire Johnny Rice that Peña’s bubbles were distracting his batters. Rice told Peña to stop blowing bubbles on the mound. “I still chew but will blow bubble when not on the mound. I don’t think I do anything wrong.” said Peña. In the big picture, it didn’t matter much. The Senators finished the 1964 season at 62-100, while the Athletics were a putrid 57-105-1.
The tie game for the A’s that summer occurred on Saturday July 4, in a game at Baltimore. Almost 38,000 fans went home that day feeling like they kissed their sister after the nine-inning game was called. Strange right? Under MLB rules of the day, since the 9th inning was completed, the game was considered a complete game and since Baltimore had an 8:15 curfew time (to account for the post-game fireworks show), the game was considered over and done. The tie wasn’t received well in Baltimore as fans booed the decision. Major League Baseball finally changed the tie rule in 2007. It goes without saying that baseball fans hate ties. Who can forget the spectacle of the 2002 All-Star game ending in a tie? Bud Selig’s career as commissioner will always be remembered for the way he handled the PED scandal, but he never recovered from the decision to call the All-Star game a tie.
Catfish Hunter picked up the last win in KC Athletics team history with a complete game three hit shutout of the White Sox on September 27, 1967, at Municipal.
The last KC Athletics home run came off the bat of catcher Dave Duncan on October 1, 1967, in Yankee Stadium off Mel Stottlemyre, an eighth-inning solo shot. Duncan would later garner acclaim as a pitching coach. Joe Pepitone hit a two-out, two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth to give the Yanks a 4-3 win over Catfish Hunter.
The last Athletic to hit a home run at Municipal was Ramon Webster, who hit a fifth-inning, two-run shot off the Orioles Eddie Fisher way back on September 2.
Reggie Jackson made his KC debut in the first game of a doubleheader on June 9, 1967. He collected his first big league hit, with a fifth inning triple off former Athletic bubble gum-blowing Orlando Peña in the nightcap.
Reggie hit the first of his 563 big league home runs on September 17, a second inning solo shot off the Angels Jim Weaver in a game at Anaheim. Reggie also hit his 500th career home run in Anaheim, as a member of the Angels, on Sept. 17, 1984, 17 years to the day that he hit his first. Number 500 came off Bud Black of the Royals. Same day, seventeen years apart. The first came playing for KC, the 500th came playing against KC.
No KC Athletics pitcher ever threw a no-hitter though once they moved to Oakland, the floodgates opened. Catfish Hunter threw a perfect game on May 8, 1968, against the Twins. Vida Blue also threw a no-no against the Twins on September 21, 1970, in just his seventh big league start.
Jack Kralick of the Twins threw the only no-hitter against the Kansas City Athletics which occurred on August 26, 1962, in a game at Bloomington. The Mall of America now stands where Metropolitan Stadium used to be. If you stand in the amusement park area of the Mall, you’ll find home plate. If you look up and to your left, you’ll see a red seat bolted to a wall. I had to squint. The seat is where the longest home run in stadium history landed, a massive 522-foot blast off the bat of Harmon Killebrew, hit on June 3, 1967, off the Angels Lew Burdette.
In a huge marketing coup, Athletics owner Charlie O. Finley paid dearly to have the Beatles perform at Municipal Stadium on September 1h, 1964. After the gig was announced, the A’s were hosting the Los Angeles Angels when noted oddball Jimmy Piersall strode to the plate wearing a Beatles-styled wig and playing air guitar with his bat, a homage to the Fab Four. Home plate umpire Frank Umont wasn’t too impressed and ordered Piersall to lose the wig. Piersall went down on strikes to another noted prankster, Moe Drabowsky.
Finley was always running goofy promotions, things like a cow milking contest between players. One of the stranger promotions was what I call the rabbit-catching race. Several fans were called out of the stands and given a long pole with a net attached to the end. Rabbits, which were painted in a checkerboard pattern (why?) were then released onto the field, while lucky fans ran them down and netted their prize. What happened next? Maybe an older fan can fill us in. Were the rabbits released unharmed? Were they butchered and sent home with the “lucky” fan? “Hey hon, guess what we’re having for supper tonight!”
The Athletics made a road trip to the South side of Chicago for a May 1965 series with the White Sox. Finley, who lived in nearby LaPorte, Indiana, had team mascot Charlie O. the mule shipped to Comisky Park. White Sox GM Ed Short refused to let the mule enter Comisky and understandably so. “We don’t issue passes to mules” said Short. Never one to handle rejection gracefully, Finley rented a parking lot across from the Stadium and hired six pretty lasses to parade Charlie O. around, much to the delight of fans.
Prior to the Royals 1969 home opener, they played two exhibition games at Municipal Stadium against the cross-state Cardinals. On April 5, 1969, in miserable cold weather and in front of only 9,425 diehard fans, Stan Musial threw out the first pitch. In a sign of things to come, the home plate umpire was Don Denkinger. St. Louis won by a score of 1-0 behind the pitching of Mike Torrez and Dave Gusti, with Torrez scoring the only run.
The Royals lineup was Pat Kely, Jerry Adair, George Spriggs, Joe Foy, Joe Keough, Mike Fiore, Ellie Rodriguez, Jackie Hernandez and pitcher Roger Nelson.
Bill Butler and Dave Wickersham also pitched for the Royals.
The Cardinals countered with: Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Vada Pinson, Joe Torre, Mike Shannon, Julian Javier, Dal Maxvill, Tim McCarver and Torrez.
The two teams played the second game of the exhibition series the next day, Easter Sunday, with the Cardinals also winning that one, 6 to 5.
On April 13, 1980, Dan Quisenberry entered the game in the eighth inning with Jamie Quirk behind the plate. This was the first instance in major league history of a battery with both last names starting with Q. Quiz saved the Royals 3-2 win over the Tigers.
The last player to play all 162 games for the Royals was Whit Merrifield in 2021. The last player to play all 162 games for the California/Anaheim Angels was…Don Baylor in 1979.
Jazz great Count Basie lived for a time at 1327 Brooklyn Avenue, just a few blocks north of Municipal Stadium. In an odd twist, he also appeared as himself in the film “Blazing Saddles”. In those days, Jazz and baseball intermingled, with musician’s often attending afternoon or evening Negro League games while the players would often spend the evenings unwinding at the nearby jazz clubs.
And finally, in the “I don’t know how I managed to live without knowing this”, back in June of 2014, the Royals were playing in Minneapolis when Bruce Chen and Yordano Ventura did what a lot of young single guys with some money burning a hole in their pocket do. They went to a strip club. They must not have been too impressed with the scenery as they left after only spending $20. A stripper at the club, one Isabel Kennedy, who describes herself as an “writer, artmaker and ass clapper who is passionately involved in feminist politics and as an advocate for sex worker rights” took offense and called out the duo for being “cheap”. She doubled down and then said, “OH WAIT SILLY ME I SEEMED TO HAVE FORGOTTEN THAT ALL PRO ATHLETES ARE CHEAP DIRTBAGS #stripperproblems”. Whew. Sounds like Ms. Kennedy might have better luck with accountants and engineers. Or James Harden.