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.
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