Rickey, who was notorious for paying his players pennies on the dollar compared to teams in larger markets such as New York, made the trade after Hafey held out of spring training for the second consecutive year. With young players such as Ripper Collins, Pepper Martin, and Joe Medwick emerging, Rickey could afford to sell off aging stars such as Hafey, secure in the knowledge that the next generation was waiting for its opportunity.

The Cardinals initially signed the California-born Hafey as a pitcher in 1922 and assigned him to Class C Fort Smith for the 1923 season. Hafey never reached the mound in a game, however. After witnessing Hafey’s proficiency in batting practice, the Cardinals moved him to the outfield, where he batted .285 with 16 home runs in his first pro season, then hit .360 for the Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League in 1924.

After a slow start to the 1925 season, Hafey was returned to the Cardinals’ farm system, but after Ray Blades was injured, Hafey returned for good and finished the year with a .302 batting average.

With Blades, Taylor Douthit, and Billy Southworth all hitting over .300, Hafey was limited to 78 games as the Cardinals won their first world championship in 1926. Playing for the injured Blades in the World Series, Hafey hit just .185 and may have already been feeling the effects of a sinus issue that required offseason surgery.

Despite a series of physical issues, Hafey emerged as one of the National League’s top hitters. In 1927, he hit .329 with a league-high .590 slugging percentage.

The following year, he became one of the few position players in the majors to wear glasses. From 1928 through 1930, he was a model of batting consistency, batting .337, .338, and .336, respectively, totaling at least 26 homers and 107 RBIs each season.

Hafey and the Cardinals struggled to agree on a contract prior to the 1931 season, and Hafey held out of spring training. When he finally signed a one-year contract for $12,500, Rickey informed the outfielder that he would not begin to draw his salary until he was deemed ready to play. That took approximately a month, resulting in the Cardinals deducting $2,500 of his salary and paying him $10,000 for the year.[2]

Despite (or, arguably, with the benefit of) his late start, Hafey won the National League batting title with a .3489 average, finishing just fractions of a point ahead of the Giants’ Bill Terry (.3486) and his teammate, Jim Bottomley (.3482). Hafey also hit 16 home runs and drove in 95 RBIs in 122 games.

Hafey and the 1931 Cardinals won their second world championship and fourth National League championship in six seasons, but Hafey hadn’t forgotten Rickey’s decision to dock his salary for the first month of the season. When the Cardinals offered him a contract of $12,500 for the 1932 season, the same base salary he had agreed to the previous season, he turned it down. He then turned out another offer for $13,000. Instead, he told the Cardinals he wanted a $15,000 contract, plus the $2,000 docked from his 1931 salary.[3] Throughout the spring, Hafey held firm with his contract demands, once again holding out of training camp.

This time, however, Rickey felt that he could afford to part ways with Hafey. Pepper Martin had hit .300 with seven homers, 75 RBIs, and 16 stolen bases in 1931 during his first extended look with the big-league club. Collins, meanwhile, had appeared in 89 games, primarily in place of the injured Bottomley at first base. He hit .348 with nine homers and 75 RBIs.

“(Manager Gabby) Street informed me he considered Collins was in line to become another Pepper Martin,” Rickey said. “That report was good enough for me. After conferring with President (Sam) Breadon, it was definitely decided to arrange a trade for Hafey.”[4]

Knowing that the Reds had previously expressed interest in Hafey, Rickey reached out to Cincinnati and let them know that the star outfielder was available in a trade.

“Two years ago, Weil asked us to place a price on Hafey,” Rickey said. “We informed him that we had no intention of disposing of Chick, but that if we ever found ourselves facing the situation where we cared to trade him, the Cincinnati club would receive the first call. We made good on this promise.”[5]

The St. Louis Star and Times reported that the Cardinals had also spoken with the Cubs about a possible trade; however, the Cubs named 13 players who were off-limits in a potential trade for Hafey, ultimately making a deal impossible.[6]

Once the trade with the Reds was announced, Rickey reached out to the St. Louis papers to defend the deal, including a verbose statement to the Star and Times.

“While this deal may not meet with the approval of our supporters here, I want it distinctly understood that this organization is not a one-man ball club and never has been,” Rickey said. “When we traded Rogers Hornsby to the New York Giants following the pennant conquest in 1926, we were bitterly criticized and assailed. Yet, we have won three pennants without the services of Hornsby. We have a player whom we consider far superior to Hornsby in Frankie Frisch.

“Then we disposed of Bob O’Farrell to the Giants one month after the 1928 season opened. The fans said: ‘They’re looney again!’ We have the greatest catcher in baseball in Jimmy Wilson. We weren’t wrong in those deals. Early last season, it was the opinion of President Breadon, Manager Street, and myself that we had one of the greatest prospects in baseball sitting on the bench and a center fielder who was slowing up. We traded Taylor Douthit to the Reds and sent Pepper Martin to center field on our club. Who will question our judgment on this transaction?

“Now, I am coming to Chick Hafey. We made every attempt to sign him at what we consider fair terms for the player. We offered him a contract calling for $13,000 – the highest salary any player who has been developed in our organization received. Hafey rejected our terms. He informed friends and others that he would retire from baseball unless we paid him $17,000. We would not pay him $17,000. Therefore, the next best move for us was to trade Hafey.”[7]

Rickey lamented Hafey’s lack of loyalty to Star and Times sports editor Sid Keener.

“In a way, I regret parting with Hafey,” Rickey said. “Do you remember back in 1923 when he joined us down in Florida? A gawky kid who was greener than grass. I took him in charge, worked with him, guided him, and prepped him carefully to make him a great ballplayer. I am not saying Hafey owed anything to this club. He made the hits at the plate and I realize I didn’t swing the bat for him. Nevertheless, it’s kind of tough in this business when a ball player loses all traces of loyalty. That’s what hurts me in trading Hafey.”[8]

Rickey’s media blitz appeared to work. Ed Wray of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote, “For once, the sympathies of fans appear to be with the club. There are two reasons for this: One is that Hafey had become a chronic conscientious objector to any salary offered him; the other is that fans, while appreciating his hitting average, had little faith in Chick when he was called upon in a pinch.”[9]

Wray was referring to Hafey’s World Series struggles. Though he had helped the Cardinals capture the National League pennant in 1926, 1928, 1930, and 1931, he had just a .205 batting average in 24 World Series games.

For his part, Hafey welcomed the trade.

“I’ve always liked manager Dan Howley of Cincinnati, and I’m ready to go back and bear down,” Hafey said. “I haven’t heard from the club yet, but I’m all set.”[10]

Howley was equally pleased to welcome Hafey to a lineup that had ranked seventh in the eight-team National League in runs scored.

“I think it is a fine move,” he said. “With Hafey and (Babe) Herman in our outfield, we are sure to have much more power than we had last season and will win some of the games which we lost, so many by small scores, through a failure to hit. I honestly believe this deal, together with the trade made with Brooklyn some time ago, improves our chances very materially for a good finish in the approaching race.”[11]

Hafey hit .344 in 1932, but made just 279 plate appearances due to his late start to the season and a month-long bout with the flu. The following year, he hit .303 and appeared in Major League Baseball’s first All-Star Game.

After batting .293 in 140 games in 1934, Hafey was just 15 games into the 1935 season when he was struck with the flu. After briefly recovering only to suffer a relapse, Hafey returned home to California and missed the remainder of that season as well as the entirety of the 1936 campaign. By the time he returned in 1937 at age 34, he wasn’t the same hitter, batting .261 in 284 plate appearances.

Hafey retired with a .317 career batting average and 1,466 career hits in 1,283 games. Though he played 120 games in a season just six times over his 13-year career, Hafey was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.

Neither of the players the Cardinals obtained in the trade stayed in St. Louis for long before Rickey sold them back to the Reds.

Frey pitched just three innings for St. Louis before he was sold back to Cincinnati on May 9. Hendrick lasted a bit longer, batting .250 with one home run before the Reds purchased him back on June 5.

Collins hit .279 and led the Cardinals’ offense with 21 homers and 91 RBIs, but the Cardinals won just 72 games and fell to sixth in the National League in 1932. Two years later, however, the Cardinals returned to the top of the league as the Gashouse Gang brought another World Series championship home to St. Louis.

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[1] Tom Swope, “Reds Get Chick Hafey, League Batting Champ,” Cincinnati Post, April 11, 1932.

[2] “Hafey Traded By Cardinals To Reds,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 11, 1932.

[3] “Hafey Is Traded To The Reds For Frey And Hendrick,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11, 1932.

[4] “Hafey Traded By Cardinals To Reds,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 11, 1932.

[5] “Hafey Traded By Cardinals To Reds,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 11, 1932.

[6] Sid Keener, “Sid Keener’s Column,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 12, 1932.

[7] “Hafey Traded By Cardinals To Reds,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 11, 1932.

[8] Sid Keener, “Sid Keener’s Column,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 12, 1932.

[9] Ed Wray, “Wray’s Column,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 12, 1932.

[10] “‘Satisfactory,’ Says Hafey; He Will Start for Cincinnati at Once,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11, 1932.

[11] Jack Ryder, “Reds Get Hafey – Give Frey and Hendrick – Opener Today,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 12, 1932.

The post Chick Hafey: Cardinals trade defending NL batting champion in 1932 first appeared on STLRedbirds.com.

Dean entered the game having won 11 of his last 12 decisions and each of his last four appearances. While Dean and his younger brother Paul were keeping the Cardinals in the pennant race, the Reds were mired at the bottom of the National League standings with a 21-44 record. Despite their season-long struggles, the Reds would prove a challenge for Dean and the Redbirds as the lead exchanged seven times in the 18-inning affair.

Dean and Cincinnati southpaw Tony Freitas exchanged zeros through the first three innings. Frankie Frisch got the Cardinals on the scoreboard in the fourth with an RBI single, but the Reds scored a run of their own with two singles and an RBI groundout in the bottom of the inning.

After Dean retired the first two batters of the fifth inning, the Reds rallied for three consecutive hits, including an RBI single by Gordon Slade and an RBI triple by Mark Koenig that gave Cincinnati a 3-1 lead.

St. Louis tied the score again in the top of the sixth. Pepper Martin led off the inning with a single, snapping an 0-for-11 slump, and scored on an RBI double by Frisch. With two outs, Ripper Collins singled into center field to score Frisch.

From there, the teams continued to trade runs. A sacrifice fly gave Cincinnati a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the sixth before Martin hit a sacrifice fly of his own to tie the score in the seventh. In the bottom of the frame, Koenig doubled and former Cardinal Chick Hafey singled into right field to give the Reds a 5-4 lead. The Cardinals wouldn’t tie the score again until the ninth, when Chick Fullis hit a leadoff double and Leo Durocher singled into center field to drive him home.

Incredibly, Dean and Freitas exchanged scoreless innings until the top of the 17^th. With one out, Joe Medwick launched his eighth home run of the year over the wall and onto a factory roof across the street.[1]

“The Reds had a lot of fun kidding Ducky during batting practice before the warfare started about his recent light hitting, and they also kidded him a lot when little Tony Freitas fanned him in the second and fourth innings of the long game. But he had the last laugh on Bob O’Farrell’s crowd,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.[2]

Dean returned to the mound for the bottom of the 17^th inning holding a 6-5 lead, but after he retired the first two batters he faced, Tony Piet doubled to left and Slade hit an RBI single to tie the score yet again.

The Reds had replaced Freitas with a pinch hitter in the frame, so Paul Derringer entered the game for Cincinnati in the 18^th. With one out, Derringer walked Burgess Whitehead. Pat Crawford, called upon to pinch hit for Dean, singled into center before Martin popped up for the second out.

With Jack Rothrock at the plate, Derringer uncorked a wild pitch that advanced the runners to second and third. Rothrock took advantage of the opportunity, reaching on an infield single that scored the go-ahead run. Frisch followed with his fourth hit of the day, a single into center field that gave the Cardinals an 8-6 lead.

With a two-run lead to protect, the Cardinals called on Jim Lindsey, a journeyman reliever who had pitched for the Reds earlier that season. On May 23, the Reds traded Lindsey to St. Paul of the American Association to acquire Freitas. Two weeks later, the Cardinals purchased Lindsey from St. Paul and inserted him into the bullpen.

Lindsey’s former teammates didn’t make it easy for him. After Lindsey retired Hafey on a fly ball to center field, Jimmy Shevlin singled and Ernie Lombardi reached on an error. Lindsey retired Harlin Pool for the second out, but then walked Adam Comorosky to load the bases.

That brought former Cardinals slugger Jim Bottomley to the plate. The 34-year-old first baseman lifted a high fly into left field, and as the Cincinnati Enquirer described it:

When the ball left his bat it looked good for three bases and would have won the game then and there. But Medwick cut back toward the scoreboard like a startled hare, leaped high and came down with the ball tightly encased in his glove.[3]

Frisch led the Cardinals offense with four hits in eight at-bats, while Martin, Rothrock, and Collins had three hits apiece.

Dean improved to 13-3 on the season with the win, which tied him with the Braves’ Fred Frankhouse for the National League lead. Over 17 innings, Dean allowed six earned runs on 18 hits and seven walks. He struck out seven of the 75 batters he faced.

“Just where the Cardinals would be without those Dean boys is not so hard to figure out,” Jack Ryder wrote in the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Somewhere down in the second division, anyway.”^[4]

Lindsey earned the save.

Incredibly, after a game that lasted almost 4 ½ hours, the Cardinals and Reds had the second game of a double-header to play. That contest, which was played “just to keep faith with the fans who had been promised a double-header,”[5] the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, ended in a 2-2 tie after five innings before it was called due to darkness. Medwick drove in both the Cardinals’ runs with his second home run of the day.

“It was a great day, with a fine crowd and an abundance of remarkable plays, but 23 innings ought to be enough for the most confirmed fanatic,” Ryder wrote. “No one could complain that he didn’t get his money’s worth on this occasion, at least.”[6]

For the Reds, Freitas received no decision for his 17-inning performance, which included six earned runs on 17 hits and two walks. He struck out five. With the loss, Derringer fell to 4-10 on the season.

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[1] Jack Ryder, “Reds Lose First In Eighteenth — Second Game Tie Affair,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2, 1934.

[2] “Dizzy Dean’s 18-Inning Victory Keeps Cards Near Front,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 2, 1934.

[3] Jack Ryder, “Reds Lose First In Eighteenth — Second Game Tie Affair,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2, 1934.

[4] Jack Ryder, “Reds Lose First In Eighteenth — Second Game Tie Affair,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2, 1934.

[5] Jack Ryder, “Reds Lose First In Eighteenth — Second Game Tie Affair,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2, 1934.

[6] Jack Ryder, “Reds Lose First In Eighteenth — Second Game Tie Affair,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2, 1934.

The post July 1, 1934: Dizzy Dean pitches 17 frames and Joe Medwick hits a game-winning homer in 18-inning marathon first appeared on STLRedbirds.com.

Batting leadoff, Martin singled, doubled, tripled, and homered while scoring four times in a 5-3 St. Louis win. Martin’s assault on Phillies pitching even surpassed the swings of two female fans who struck umpire Charlie Moran with their umbrellas after the game.

A native of Oklahoma, Martin was one of the characters who would make up the Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang culture in 1934. In his early years, he formed a band with Lon Warneke, Max Lanier, Bill McGee, Bob Weil, and French Bordagaray called the Mississippi Mudcats. He also raced midget cars and was known to hunt rattlesnakes with a stick and a burlap sack.^[1]

Martin made his major league debut in 1928 but spent the entire 1929 season and most of 1930 in the minors. In 1931, after batting .363 with 20 homers for Rochester the previous year, Martin enjoyed a breakout rookie campaign, hitting .300 with seven homers, 75 RBIs, and 16 stolen bases. In the World Series against the defending champion Philadelphia Athletics, Martin tied a record with 12 hits, batting .500 with one homer, five RBIs, and five stolen bases.

The 1932 season was a down year for Martin, as he hit just .238 in 85 games, but 1933 proved to be one of the best years of his career. Heading into the May 5 game against the Phillies, Martin was batting .298 with a .411 on-base percentage.

He continued that success in his first at-bat against Pearce, a rookie right-hander from Middletown, Kentucky. Martin singled to left field to open the game, then scored on a two-out single by Rogers Hornsby.

The Phillies answered in the bottom of the first against Cardinals starting pitcher Bill Walker. A two-time National League ERA champion for the New York Giants, the 29-year-old Walker went just 8-12 with a 4.14 ERA in 1932 and was traded to the Cardinals that offseason.

Philadelphia left fielder Alta Cohen, making his debut in the Phillies outfield, welcomed Walker to the game with a leadoff double, and Chick Fullis hit an RBI single to center to tie the score, 1-1.

Martin helped the Cardinals regain the lead in the third with a leadoff triple to center field. Two batters later, Pat Crawford grounded out, allowing Martin to score.

Martin homered to left field in the fifth to give the Cardinals a 3-1 lead, and Philadelphia’s Chuck Klein homered in the sixth to cut the Cardinals’ lead in half.

In the top of the eighth, Martin capped his four-hit day with a double to left field. He later scored on a sacrifice fly.

Fullis added another RBI single off Walker in the eighth, but one inning later, Joe Medwick doubled and Jimmie Wilson drove him home to make the score 5-3.

Walker retired all three batters he faced in the ninth to secure his first win of the season. The final batter, Al Todd, hit a swinging bunt that Moran called fair for the final out of the game. Todd and Phillies manager Burt Shotton each debated the call, and several women – celebrating Ladies’ Day at the ballpark – joined the Phillies on the field to dispute the call.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer’s accounting of the incident:

“They milled about the umpire, verbally assaulting him with such music as ‘You’re a bum – robber – thief,’ – ‘You’re as blind as my husband and twice as dumb,’ – ‘If I was married to you, I would put arsenic in your coffee.’

Moran took all this with a smile … but when two of the feminine contingent lifted their umbrellas (although it was not raining) and started to impress their thoughts on his head, he demurred.[2]

Eventually, Shotton calmed matters enough to allow the umpire to leave the field.

Walker earned his first win of the season, scattering eight hits and a walk over nine innings. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s J. Roy Stockton wrote that, “Walker showed his best form of the season … and while he didn’t have the speed that made him the league’s outstanding pitcher in 1931, he was putting his curve just where he wanted it.”[3]

The win marked the Cardinals’ fourth consecutive victory and improved their record to 9-9 for the season. The team finished the year 82-71, good for fifth place in the National League.

Martin went on to bat .316 with eight homers and 57 RBIs. He led the National League with 26 stolen bases and 122 runs scored. Along the way, he was named to the first of four career All-Star Games and was fifth in the National League MVP vote at the end of the season.

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[1] John Heidenry (2007), “The Gashouse Gang,” PublicAffairs, 95.

[2] Stan Baumgartner, “Martin Runs Wild As Redbirds Top Phils,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 1933.

[3] J. Roy Stockton, “Martin Bats Cardinals To 5-3 Victory Over Phillies,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5, 1933.

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