Sorry to be getting this story to you so late. It’s actually my third attempt. The first time I wrote it up back in 2003, it became part of the book I did with the late Buff slugging star Jerry Witte, “A Kid rom St. Louis” in slightly different form. Today’s version is pretty much of a reprint on the column I wrote over at ChronCom, the Houston Chronicle website, on July 7, 2008.
What stirred to repeat it here was the news that longtime Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard has died at age 99. Sheppard had worked the Yankee Stadium games from 1951 through 2006, becoming the franchise’s iconic voice over the process of time.
Thanks to my dad, I got to see the Yankee club that started Sheppard’s career in New York – and that 1951 team included Joe DiMaggio in his last season and Mickey Mantle in his first. And I got to see them both together in the same outfield at Buff Stadium, even getting to stand there on that field with them behind the spillover spectator ropes as a kid fan on the first standing room row.
How blessed can a lucky kid from the East End have been, so, in honor of Sheppard, my father, and the memory of a lifetime, here it is again, one more time.
The Houston Post, April 9, 1951
The date was April 8, 1951. It was a typically hot and humid 3:00 PM Sunday afternoon baseball game at Buff Stadium. Because of the very special circumstances, my dad had driven 13 year old me, my 9 year old little brother John, and my 13 year old Pecan Park best friend Billy Sanders to a pre-season exhibition game at the old ballpark.
The New York Yankees were coming through town to play the Houston Buffs in a single game. The great Joe DiMaggio was set to play center field for the Yankees, with 18-year old rookie spring training phenom Mickey Mantle playing right fieldI. Everybody in Houston wanted to see this game. And it would turn out to be a game and afternoon that all of us would remember forever.
Oh my! I only wish that I had been able to take my Kodak Brownie camera with me to that special game on that particular day, but I learned too late that I had no more film and, with Dad springing for the tickets, I knew better than to ask him for extra money as an advance on my allowance – just for film. Dad had his own ideas about what was important and he didn’t suffer well from requests that seemed extravagant. As a result, 57 years later, you will just have to settle here for pictures that still exist vividly in my mind as best I am to develop them for you in words.
We left for the game only about forty-five minutes prior to its scheduled start. That fact alone bothered me. Since we didn’t have tickets, I worried that we might not be able to get into the ballpark due to an almost certain sellout. Anxiety didn’t matter. Dad already had settled into his “don’t worry about it” mode and there was nothing left for me to do but keep my fingers crossed and pray. Yes, I prayed about stuff like this when I was 13.
When we reached the Cullen Boulevard exit going north up the Gulf Freeway from the southeast, our red 1950 Studebaker immediately oozed into bumper-to-bumper traffic and slowed to an inch-by-inch pace over the last 500 feet of street-trekking into the Buff Stadium parking lot.
“Oh, My God!” I muttered from the back seat.
“Don’t get the Lord involved in this one!” Dad affirmed, as he lit another Camel and began to bongo the steering wheel with his right hand.
I didn’t say it, but I thought it: “If we had gotten the Lord involved earlier, we wouldn’t be going through this and left the house earlier, and with my Kodak Brownie camera already loaded with film!”
By the time we reached the ticket gate, we already knew that we would be lucky if the SRO tickets were still available. Buff Stadium held 11,000-seated tickets, but club president Allen Russell was already roping off about twenty feet from the outfield in left and right field. By taking that measure and just making every ball that flew or rolled into the outfield SRO section a ground rule double, Russell would be able to get an extra 2,500 to 3,000 fans into the ballpark for the big game.
Once Dad bought our tickets for the left field crowd, I didn’t mind at all. I knew that we now had a chance to fight for a front-of-the-rope position deep as possible toward center field – and very near the great Joe DiMaggio.
It happened. We did it. We battled for four spots in left center on the front rope line and won. To our left during the game, the great Joe D. was often no more than fifty feet away. Once he even came over and, running toward us, he caught a fly ball directly in front of us. In my mind I whispered, “Nice catch, Joe!”, but the actual words could not escape my lips. I can still hear the sound of his footsteps as his charge came closer and closer. For whatever reason, I wasn’t worried about him crashing into us. And he didn’t.
I could squint into the further distance and see the young Mickey Mantle in right field. He looked so very young because he was. He was only five years older than my friend Billy and me. I remember thinking, “Wow! In five years, I could be either playing pro baseball too or else, serving with the army in Korea.”
Neither happened. I never had the talent of a Mickey Mantle. And they settled the Korean War before I could get there.
Once in a while during the game, when the Yankees were in the field, I would close my right eye to block out the sight of Yankee left fielder Gene Woodling. As I did, it was to help my fantasy that it was I, not Woodling, playing left field for the Yankees. What an outfield that was on April 8, 1951: Mantle in right; DiMaggio in center; and McCurdy in left!
In my dreams, small things never occurred to me.
The game itself did not disappoint, except for the fact that none of my Yankee adulation had removed my first loyalty to the Buffs. The Buffs jumped on the Yankees early, but couldn’t hold them for the full nine innings.
Going into the 9th, the Yankees led, 13-6, paced by Mickey Mantle’s 5th inning, 3-run homer over our heads and over the double-deck fence in left center that rose behind us. 2-run homers earlier by both Russell Rac and Frank Shofner had not been enough to keep the Buffs in contention.
Then something happened in the 9th that may have never occurred before or since. I know the facts of this story from my interviews with former Buffs slugger Jerry Witte, when we were working on his biography “A Kid From St. Louis” a few years ago.
Jerry Witte had been asking Joe DiMaggio all day for a souvenir bat. Nothing happened until the top of the 9th, when Joltin’ Joe crashed a homer of his own to left with one man on base. As the game moved to the bottom of the 9th with the Yankees now leading 15-6, DiMaggio sent his home run bat over by way of a bat boy as his gift to Jerry Witte.
When Jerry Witte came to bat against veteran hurler Max Peterson with two Buffs on base in the bottom of the 9th, he decided on impulse to use the DiMaggio bat for his last time up against the Yankees.
Lo and behold! Deploying the same bat that Joe D. had used to crank a homer in the top half of the 9th, Jerry Witte unloaded a “Fair Maid Bakery” blast to center field in the bottom of the 9th to make the final score in the game New York Yankees 15 – Houston Buffs 9!
As Witte trotted home at the end of his home run pace, he says he stole a look for DiMaggio in the Yankees first base dugout. He said that DiMaggio was falling all over himself with laughter for having supplied Witte with his weapon of last productive resort.
After the game. Jerry Witte got Joe DiMaggio to sign the bat for him. He still owned the bat at the time of his death in 2002. If there was ever another instance in organized baseball of two players from opposite teams both homering in the 9th, or any other inning, of the same game, using the same bat, I’ve never heard of it.
I will always be grateful to my Dad for taking us to the biggest game in my childhood memory. I’m also glad that he didn’t buy our tickets in advance. Had he done so, we would have missed out on our up close and personal experience in the outfield with the great Joe DiMaggio on a hot April day in Houston back in 1951.
Things do have a way of working out for the best. Sometimes.
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 