Henry Aaron: Phillie Killer

Henry Aaron was probably the single most famous person I ever got to meet personally. In 1978 or 79, about a year or so after he had retired from baseball as the all time home run champion, Aaron appeared at a luncheon at the old Alvino's Restaurant in Langhorne, PA. As the coach of the Bristol High School baseball team, I was invited to bring some of my players and attend the luncheon. There we got to shake hands with the great man and pose for a group picture with him. I don't now remember the topic of Aaron's talk, but I remember how he spoke: quietly and with dignity, just the way carried himself as a ballplayer for so many years. 

Many people may remember Aaron as the prolific home run hitter that he was. The image of the aging star turning on an Al Downing fastball and launching it over the fence for home run 715, breaking Babe Ruth's record is burned in most of our minds. For me, however, who was lucky enough to have seen Aaron play in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Aaron was the consummate line drive hitter, slashing base hits to every part of the ballpark and often hustling them into doubles and triples. Many of those line drives also left the park, of course, but they were almost always line drives, not those long majestic bombs hit by other sluggers of the day like Harmon Killebrew or Mickey Mantle. 

Perhaps that is why Aaron suddenly sneaking up on Ruth's record came as a surprise to many. He never had huge home run numbers; the most he ever hit was 47. What Aaron was was a consistent hitter. Probably the most consistent power hitter in baseball history. While he never hit 50 homeruns in a season, he hit 30 or more in 15 of his 23 seasons and exactly 44 homeruns (the number he wore on his back) four times.

As a lifelong Phillies fan, what I mostly remember about Aaron is how often he seemed to beat the home team. For his career. Aaron hit .318 against the Phillies pitchers with 76 home runs. Connie Mack Stadium was one of his favorite away ballparks. He hit 39 home runs there, topped only by Chicago's Wrigley Field (50) and Cincinnati's Crosley Field (43). Remarkably, Aaron hit 16 triples in old Connie Mack, seven more than he hit at any other away ballpark. This reinforces the view of Aaron as a line drive hitter with speed. Connie Mack had a spacious outfield that gave the advantage to a guy who hit the ball on a line in the gaps.

Aaron had some special games at Connie Mack Stadium like the night of June 14, 1957 when he went 3 for 5 with a homerun and 4 RBIs in a 10-5 Braves win. Or the night of May 22, 1959 when he had four hits including a two-run home run off Robin Roberts,  scored 4 runs and knocked in 3 more. And then there was the May 30, 1961 game when Aaron's eighth-inning triple drove in the 2 runs that were the difference in a Braves 3-1 victory. In a 5 game series against the Phillies in July of 1962 Aaron compiled 9 hits, 2 home runs, and 6 runs scored. In a three game series in 1968 he collected 8 hits, including 2 home runs. Aaron had a 2 home run game at Connie Mack on April 20, 1966. The second home run that day, off Bo Belinsky, was the 400th of Aaron's career. Two years later, on July 26, 1968, he would hit career number 501 at Connie Mack off Grant Jackson.

Aaron's greatest day at Connie Mack Stadium came on Thursday night, May 3, 1962. It started with a solo home run against Art Mahaffey in the first. Aaron led off the 3rd with one of his patented Connie Mack Stadium triples and then scored on a Joe Adcock sacrifice fly. Aaron doubled in the fifth, before striking out in the 7th. He finished off the evening with a two-run home run in the 9th off Phils reliever Jack Baldschun, to tie the score at 8-8. The Phillies finally won the game in the bottom of the ninth when Clay Dalrymple singled home Johnny Callison. Aaron's line for the night: 5 AB, 3 R, 4 H, 3 RBIs, 2B. 3B, 2 HRs.

To be fair to the Phillies though, virtually every team that Aaron played against in his prime could point to similar numbers. He batted .326 for his career against the Cubs and swatted 97 home runs against the Reds. Henry Aaron was simply a great hitter. I was lucky enough to see Mays and Aaron close up in their primes. Mays was certainly the more charismatic player on the field, but as one wag once said, "Aaron could do everything Mays could do, but his cap stayed on."

Robin Roberts Amazing 17 Inning 300 Pitch Performance

 In 1952, Robin Roberts was unquestionably the best pitcher in baseball. He won 28 games and lost only 7. He won 20 of his final 22 starts and 17 of his final 18. He completed 30 of the 37 games he started and threw 330 innings, the most in the league in 25 years. Over those 330 innings he walked only 45 batters. All of these were remarkable accomplishments, of course, but in a September game against the Boston Braves when he wasn't at his best, he may have turned in his most remarkable single performance.

Robbie was looking for his 23rd victory of the year when he took the mound on Saturday afternoon September 6 in the first game of a double header. He did not have his best stuff.  The Braves scratched out two runs in the fourth inning and then scored another three in the sixth inning on three hits and a pair of Phillies errors. The Braves 6th run of the day came on an Eddie Matthews home run in the eighth inning. The Phillies rallied, however, and tied the score with four runs in the bottom of the eighth on five hits; the big blow being a two run, two RBI Jackie Mayo double.

Roberts shut down the Braves in the ninth with the help of the Phillies defense catching Johnny Logan trying to score from first on a single by Earl Torgeson. The Phillies went down quietly in the ninth and Roberts walked out to the mound as the game went into extra innings. The Braves managed to get runners on in each of the next 8 innings except for the 17th. Each time, Roberts wriggled out of trouble. In the 12th inning, Boston opened with back-to-back singles by Sid Gordon and Earl Torgeson. Roberts then fielded Matthews bunt and threw out Gordon at third. He then induced a double play grounder from pinch-hitter Walker Cooper. In the 15th Jack Daniels led off with a double and moved to third on Jack Ditmer's long fly ball. Roberts worked out of it by striking out pitcher Bob Chipman and getting Sam Jethroe to ground out to first. 

Meanwhile, the Phillies were flailing futilely at the offerings of left-handed reliever Chipman. They managed only a couple of singles from the 10th through the 16th. Finally, in the bottom of the 17th inning, Phillies slugger Del Ennis came to the plate and belted a line drive over the fence in left. Pandemonium broke out in the ballpark. Final score: Phillies 7 Braves 6. A weary Roberts had his 23rd win of the season.

A look inside the numbers shows just how remarkable this performance was. His 17-inning complete game was the longest complete game victory by any pitcher since Dizzy Dean pitched a 17-inning win in 1934 and there has not been a pitching performance to match it since. Vernon Law of the Pirates did pitch 18 innings in a game he started in 1955, but he was pulled from the game before it ended in a Pirate victory in the 19th. Roberts not only pitched a 17-inning complete game, but he was pitching his way out of trouble the whole way. He was touched for a total of 18 hits; he walked 3 and struck out 5. In all he faced an astounding 71 batters. Major league baseball did not keep track of  pitch counts in those days, but a rough estimate of an average of 4 pitches per batter would mean that Roberts threw close to 300 pitches for the game. Robbie was a workhorse though. He made his next start four days later on regular rest, a 3-2 complete game victory. It was like his teammate Curt Simmons said of him, "He was like a diesel engine. The more you used him, the better he ran. I don't think you could wear him out."*

*The National Baseball Hall of Fame Almanac, Durham: Baseball America, 2017 Edition), 370.