Johnny Blatnik's Merry Month of May 1948

With many fine young players, the Phillies were a team on the rise in 1948. In spring training two new outfielders were impressing Phillies manager Ben Chapman and major league scouts from every team in both leagues. The 21-year-old Richie Ashburn was impressing with his speed and defensive prowess, The 26-year-old Johnny Blatnik was impressing with his power bat. When asked to rate the best of the crop of young players, the scouts praised infielder Granny Hamner, pitcher Curt Simmons, catcher Stan Lopata, and the high-flying Ashburn, but they reserved special praise for Blatnik. 

Discussing potential rookies of the year, St. Louis Cardinals manager, Eddie Dyer  told Frank Yeutter of Baseball Digest, that while there were many candidates, including Ashburn and his own first baseman, Nippy Jones, he thought Blatnick was the best of them all. "There's a kid (Blatnik) who looks like an old-time ballplayer. He's a good fielder, he can throw well enough, but that bat of his is dynamite." Ben Chapman compared Blatnik favorably to Phillies slugger Del Ennis. "He has the fastest wrists I have ever seen," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer's Stan Baumgartner.

Expert predictions, especially in baseball, often do not pan out. Ashburn, of course, went on to be a key member of the pennant winning Whiz Kids of 1950, and to a Hall of Fame career as a centerfielder for the Phillies, Cubs, and Mets. Meanwhile Blatnik is little more than a footnote on a long list of promising Phillies players who never quite made the grade.

Blatnik, a husky 200 pound six-footer, began his professional baseball career in 1939 with the Washington Senators minor league system, but quickly moved to the Cleveland Indians chain. Blatnik was making steady, if not spectacular, progress through the low minors when his career, like so many ballplayers', was interrupted by World War II. Blatnik lost four years to the war, but when he returned, to Cleveland's Harrisburg affiliate, he showed great improvement in both batting average and power. In 1946 he hit .346 with 19 homeruns and 108 RBIs. Promoted to Class A Wilkes-Barre, he hit .334 with 10 homeruns in 1947. Despite these numbers, Blatnik was left unprotected by the Indians and the Phillies snapped him up for the waiver price of $10,000 dollars.

After impressing the Phillies in the spring, Blatnik made the team as a reserve outfielder. Ashburn had won the job in centerfield, so 1947 centerfielder and batting champion Harry (The Hat) Walker was moved to left. Ennis was in right. Blatnik was restricted to just five pinch-hitting appearances in the month of April. Those at bats resulted in 0 hits, 1 walk and 1 run scored. In early May, however, Walker came down with a case of the flu, and Blatnik took over as the starting left fielder.

In his first major league start on Sunday May 2, Blatnik, batting third, cracked out three singles and drove in two. His first major league hit came off the Brooklyn Dodgers' Rex Barney. The Phillies lost the game 9-6. One week later he had six hits, including his first double and first triple, and five RBIs in a doubleheader sweep of the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field, Cincinnati. On May 12 at Pittsburgh he went 4 for 4 with a double and 2 RBIs in a 5-0 Phillies victory. Blix Donnelly pitched the three hit shutout.

The hits kept on coming. He had three hits at Shibe Park on May 17 against the New York Giants in a 7-1 Phillies victory and another three hit game on May 22 in a 9-2 home loss to Cincinnati. Blatnik's first career homerun came the next day in the first game of a doubleheader at Shibe Park, a two-run shot against the St. Louis Cardinals, Red Munger. His second homerun came in the second game of that doubleheader and was the only run the Phillies scored in that 4-1 loss.

For the month of May 1948, Johnny Blatnik came to bat 99 times and banged out 38 hits for a .384 batting average. The hits included nine doubles, five triples, two homeruns and 18 RBIs. From May 5 to May 19, he hit in 11 straight games. By the end of the month, Blatnik was fourth in the league in hitting. It was a merry month of May indeed for Johnny Blatnik.

It looked like Phillies fans had a new hero to root for, but the good times did not last. According to Blatnik's biographer, John Wickline, Blatnik suffered heatstroke during a game at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, missed a few games and struggled to regain his form. He hit .261 in June, .242 in July. .205 in August, and just .180 in September. Perhaps it was the heatstroke or perhaps it was the major league pitchers figuring out Blatnik's weaknesses, but Johnny never regained that May 1948 form. An early scouting report, recounted in the Baseball Digest article provides a clue to Blatnik's inability to sustain his hitting pace: "He swung hard enough, but too often. He cut at inside and outside pitches, he lunged, he hitched." 

Before the 1949 season, the Phillies traded Harry Walker for veteran Cubs outfielder, Bill "Swish" Nicholson and Blatnik found himself the odd man out. Optioned to the Phillies Triple-A affiliate in Toronto, Blatnik hit well (.290, 15 HRs, 80 RBIs), earning a September call-up, but he appeared in only two games after being recalled. In 1950, Blatnik did not figure in the Whiz Kids plans. Traded to St. Louis in late April for pitcher Ken Johnson, Blatnik appeared in just seven games for the Cardinals before he was again sent down to the minor leagues. Blatnik played in the International League for the next six seasons, before retiring from professional baseball and settling with his family in Lansing, Ohio. 

Johnny Blatnik is one more Phillies' tale of what might have been.

Brett Gardner: Phillie Killer

This article originally appeared in Here's the Pitch, the newsletter of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America (IBWAA). If you are interested in the group and/or would like to subscribe to the newsletter you can find more information here.

 

Seeing Brett Gardner yank a line drive home run into the cornfield during the Field of Dreams game on August 12th this year was a refreshing reminder that Gardner does indeed hit well against teams other than the Phillies. You could forgive Phillies fans for thinking he reserves his best for them alone. In a solid 13-year career, played entirely with the New York Yankees, Gardner has slashed .259/.343/.401 with 134 home runs in 5,606 at bats. Decent, but hardly Hall of Fame-type numbers. Against the Phillies, however, Gardner is the second coming of Babe Ruth. In 14 career games before this year, he has slashed an amazing .386/.460/.750 with 4 home runs in just 44 at bats. In four games in 2021, he has continued the onslaught.

 This is an admittedly small sample size, but his performance against Philadelphia qualifies him a bona fide Phillie Killer. Gardner has some distinguished company on the Phillie Killer list. Other solid, but not spectacular, players who saved their best for the Phillies include the Marlins’ Jeff Connie (.287/.363/.487 with 14 home runs), the Giants’ Bill Mueller (345/.417/.547), the Braves’ Matt Diaz (.316/.353/.529 with 8 home runs) and the Rockies’ Ryan Spillborghs (.419/.463/.649). This list ignores some more traditional Phillie Killers like the Braves’ Freddie Freeman or the Mets’ Michael Conforto, who hammer other teams regularly as well.

Gardner made his debut against the Phillies as a pinch hitter on May 23, 2009. Facing Phillies reliever Ryan Madson, he lashed an eighth inning double to left field in a game the Yankees eventually won, 5-4. The next day he got his first start against the Phillies, going 1 for 4 as the Phillies prevailed, 4-3 behind Cole Hamels. In the 2009 Yankees/Phillies World Series, Phils’ pitchers managed to hold Gardner to 0 for 10 in the five games in which he appeared.

 In 2010, Gardner went 2 for 3 with a triple, a single, a walk, and 2 runs batted in against Roy Halladay in a game the Yankees won 8-3 behind C. C. Sebathia. Jamie Moyer and Kyle Kendrick shut Gardner down in the next two games as Gardner went 0 for 6 and the Phillies won both games.

 The Yankees and Gardner did not face the Phillies again until 2015. That year Gardner firmly established his Phillie Killer credentials. In three games at Yankee Stadium, Gardner collected seven hits, two home runs, a double, five RBIs, and six runs scored. In the June 22 game alone, he went 4 for 4, with a home run, while driving in three and scoring two more. In 2018 Gardner went 1 for 4 with a run scored in a 4-2 Yankees win at Citizens Bank Park but was 0 for 3 against Zach Eflin in the only other Yankee/Phillies match up that year.

 Gardner returned to Phillie Killer form in the pandemic shortened 2020 season. He started in three of the four games the Yankees and Phillies played at Citizens Bank Park that year. On August 3, he homered off Jake Arrieta in a 6-3 Yankees win. On August 5, he homered again, this time off Zack Wheeler and had two hits, two RBIs and scored two runs as the Yankees fell 11-6. On August 6, he had two more hits.

 Gardner’s Phillie Killer status extends even to spring training. In March 2021 in Tampa, he smashed a grand slam homerun off the Phils’ Zack Wheeler. In four regular season games against the Phillies, Gardner has homered, tripled, driven in two, and scored three. The homerun was an atypical Gardner blast, instead of sneaking over the wall in dead right, this one went to deepest right center field off the Phillies’ Aaron Nola.

 So historically, while all other opponents can expect Brett Gardner to get a hit every four at bats or so against them, the Phillies must brace for a Gardner hit nearly twice in every five at bats. While other teams can expect Gardner to homer about once every 42 at bats, the Phillies can expect a dinger once in every 11 at bats, a Ruthian pace.

 What makes Gardner such a terror against the Phillies? Small sample size is certainly an important part of the explanation. If Gardner played more against the Phillies, his statistics would in all probability skew closer to the mean. Short right field porches in both Yankee Stadium and Citizens Bank Park may explain some off the power numbers, but Gardner plays half his games at Yankee Stadium and does not put up these numbers against other teams. Maybe it can all be put down to the revenge of Jerry Gardner, Brett’s dad, who toiled in the outfield for four years in the 1970s in the Phillies minor league system without advancing above Double A Reading.

 The most likely explanation is that in baseball, the wonderful, the weird, and the anomalous happen all the time. How else to explain that a career .267 hitter like Dave Concepcion hit .391 against the great Tom Seaver? Or that the short list of players who have hit four home runs in a game includes Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt, and a guy named Scooter Gennett? Or that an unheralded rookie left-hander making his first start in the major leagues, like Tyler Gilbert, could throw a no-hitter against one of the best offensive teams in the league?

When Brett Gardner faces the Philadelphia Phillies the baseball gods take note and smile down upon him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Long Should a Major League Baseball Game Be?

This article originally appeared in Here's the Pitch, the newsletter of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America (IBWAA). If you are interested in the group and/or would like to subscribe to the newsletter you can find more information here.

Huck Betts was the loser in that 69 minute game

On September 9, I tweeted out a brief note about how the 1921 Phillies lost to the Boston Braves, 2-0, in a game that lasted just one hour and nine minutes. Even by 1921 standards this was a short game and I thought it worth noting. Most respondents replied with a variation of “Wow” The good old days!” But one person responded unexpectedly, “I never understood the desire for a ‘fast’ game. A fast game like that can be interesting from a novelty standpoint, however, it's supposed to be a more leisurely game than other team sports. I figure I pay to go see the boys play; I want my money's worth!”

Fair enough. It is probably true that no one wants to invest the money and time it takes to get to the ballpark to watch a game that lasts only a little longer than a rerun of Law & Order. It is undoubtedly true that baseball, with its agrarian roots, was meant to be played at a leisurely pace. This comment begs the question that I have not heard discussed in all the clamor about the length of games and all the various machinations the major leagues have gone through to shorten games: pitch clocks, ghost runners, three hitter rules, limited mound visits, etc. The question is: just what is the ideal length of a baseball game?

I did some research. On September 9, 1921, six major league games were played. The average length of a game was 1 hour and 40 minutes. The shortest game was that Phillies/Braves game at 1:09 and the longest was a 20-15 affair between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox that ran for 2 hours and 20 minutes. Exactly 100 years later, on September 9, 2021, the average game lasted 3 hours and 2 minutes. The shortest game that day was played in 2 hours and 41 minutes between the White Sox and Oakland A’s. The final score was 3-2. The longest nine-inning game that day was a 3-hour 30-minute duel between the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees, which the Blue Jays won, 6-4.

I think we can all agree that the ideal length of a nine inning major league baseball game likely falls between the extremes of 69 minutes and 210 minutes, but just what length would make sure that patrons get their money’s worth, that the leisurely traditions of baseball are observed, that people get home in time to get a decent night’s sleep before going to school or work the next day, and that fans are not driven away from their tv screens by endless mound visits, pitching changes, batting glove adjustments, body armor stripping, and pocket index card readings?

Based on absolutely no scientific data but going solely on my instincts as a baseball fan who has been listening to and watching baseball since Mickey Mantle was a rookie, I have determined that 2 hours and 30 minutes is the ideal length of a baseball game. A 2 ½ hour game covers a lot of bases. Fans get their money’s worth; the pace is leisurely enough for any baseball traditionalist; kids get home in time to finish their homework, the workforce is rested and ready to go the next day, and non-fans can get the television back so they can watch Friends reruns. Two-and-one-half hours is a win-win.

Can this 2 ½ hour ideal be achieved? As the chart below shows, the last year that major league baseball averaged 2 ½ hours per game was 43 years ago in 1978.

Chart from Silverman, Steve. “The Average Length of Major League Games,” Sports Rec, December 11, 2018.

 Many things have conspired to increase the length of games since then, but much of what we think of as a part of the modern game was already in place in 1978, including television commercial breaks, heavy use of relief pitchers, and free agency, which meant a lot of money was riding on every pitch.

The increasing time of games is a trend that will be hard to turn around. All the recent efforts have pretty much failed to have much of an impact. For my part, I am not in favor of ploys that may shorten games, but fundamentally change the way the game is played. Here I speak of such spurious innovations as the “ghost runner” for extra innings and the seven-inning games in doubleheaders.

If we are truly going to move the time of game needle back toward that ideal 2 ½ hour target, it is the players who will need to step up.  The best way to squeeze minutes out of game time at this point is to cut down on the time between pitches. It has proven difficult to police players stepping out of the batter’s box to adjust everything from their batting gloves to their helmets to their elbow guards, so batters will need to do this voluntarily. On the pitching mound, I am old enough to remember pitchers like Robin Roberts and Bob Gibson, who got the ball back from the catcher and went right back into their windup. In fact, most good pitchers throughout baseball history have worked at a brisk pace. These days when a pitcher like the Phillies Vince Velasquez gets a man on base, the game slows to an unwatchable crawl.

Umpires can help, too. Simply enforcing the rules already in place would speed things up. Refusing to grant time for every batter’s whim and directing the hitter to stay in the box between pitches will take some players out of their comfort zone for a while, but it wouldn’t take that long to establish a new comfort zone.

What incentive do players have for stepping up the pace of the game? Professional athletes play for money. Money is the incentive to speed up the game. Money depends on television revenue. If people stop watching baseball because they get tired of slogging through four-hour games that end with a 2-1 score and 20 total strikeouts, the television money will dry up.  With all the entertainment choices available to people, baseball is fighting for its survival. There is plenty of blame to go around for this, and baseball management has done a poor job of marketing its stars, but length of game remains an issue and the innovations management has attempted haven’t worked. Time for the players to step up here, if for no other reason than self-preservation. 

Stan Lopata and "The Crouch"

If you were a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies in the mid-1950s, chances are one of your favorite Phillies was catcher Stan "Big Stash" Lopata. And if you were playing Little League or Babe Ruth League baseball in those days, chances are you tried, at some point, to imitate "the stance." The stance was the unique crouch that Lopata adopted in 1954, after six years of indifferent success at the plate. Hall of Fame pitcher turned broadcaster, Dizzy Dean, described the stance as "looking like a man hitting out of an easy chair." The player with the closest modern equivalent to the Lopata crouch was probably Jeff Bagwell of the Houston Astros, but even Bagwell didn't crouch as far down as Lopata and Bagwell spread out in the box, while Lopata kept his feet close together.

Lopata's unusual approach at the plate came out of a chance conversation in a Chicago hotel lobby in 1954 with one of the greatest hitters of all time, Rogers Hornsby. Lopata's Phillie roommate, outfielder Johnny Wyrostek, knew Hornsby, and asked the Rajah if he had any tips for Lopata, who was struggling at the plate. Hornsby told Lopata that he missed too many balls. He said that anytime you swing the bat you should make some kind of contact. Lopata took the advice to the ballpark that day and many years later he told reporter Skip Clayton what happened next:

So that day I went to the ballpark, I did crouch a little and felt real good, and I saw the ball better. The second time up, I got down a little lower, and the third time, I got even lower. I saw the ball better, and it seemed I could pull the ball better.

While opposing players, managers, and fans laughed at what they saw as the comical stance, Lopata silenced them with his immediate success. After beginning to crouch in early June, he went on a tear that saw his batting average balloon from .247 to .323 in a month. He was slowed for a while by a broken finger, but eventually more power came, too. On July 31, his two-run home run beat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-5. For the 1954 season, playing in a platoon with the left-handed hitting Smoky Burgess, Lopata hit a solid .290 with 14 homeruns and 42 RBIs in just 259 at bats. These were easily the best offensive numbers of his career. But Stan and his stance were just getting started. 

In 1955, Stan was still platooning, this time with the reacquired Andy Seminick, and still crouching. He also added to his look and his legend by adopting tinted glasses to his repertoire; the result of bright night baseball lights bothering his eyes. Stan was the first major league catcher to wear glasses. New look or no, the hits kept coming. He totaled 22 home runs and 58 RBIs in 303 at bats while compiling a solid .271 average. On June 19 at Wrigley Field he had five hits in six at bats as the Phillies won 1-0 in 15 innings. Lopata started that game at first base as manager Mayo Smith sought ways to keep Lopata's potent bat in the lineup.

Finally in 1956, Lopata was the everyday Phillies catcher and he responded with one of the finest offensive seasons in Phillies history. He established records for Phillies' catchers for most doubles (33), most triples (7), most homers (32), and most RBIs (95). All of those single season records still stand with the exception of the RBI total which was surpassed by Darren Daulton when he drove in 110 in 1992. After his retirement, Stan said, "I had a real good year in 1956, but I didn't know how good a year it was until I saw all of the records in the Phillies media guide. It's nice to hold them as long as possible."

Lopata's stance was so unusual and so successful that many opposing National League managers questioned whether it was legal. Walter Alston of the Dodgers told Baseball Digest he thought the stance gave Lopata (and others who crouched like Ernie Banks), an unfair advantage with the strike zone. There was nothing illegal about the stance, but the controversy about the strike zone for crouching hitters continued for years.

Lopata battled through numerous injuries to his shoulder and knee in 1957. He received much credit from teammates and management for his determination to play through injuries, but this willingness cost him. His offensive numbers fell off considerably. Off season knee surgery was performed, but Stan never fully recovered his form and in 1959 he was traded to the Milwaukee Braves, along with shortstop Ted Kazanski, for pitcher Gene Conley and infielder Joe Koppe. He retired after appearing in just 32 games with the Braves over two seasons.

Despite the disappointing ending to his career in Philadelphia, for a few seasons during the 1950s, Stan Lopata was Philadelphia's own "Stan the Man." With his tinted glasses and his peek-a-boo batting style, not to mention his many prodigious home run clouts, Stan was a player the young fans could all root for and emulate.

Sources

C. Paul Rogers, "Stan Lopata" SABR BioProject accessed on October 5, 2021.
Skip Clayton and Jeff Moeller, 50 Fabulous Phillies, Sports Publishing, Inc., 2000.