Danny Litwhiler: The Phillies' "Slugging School Master"

On September 2, 1940, as the Phillies swept a doubleheader from the New York Giants, twenty-three-year-old Danny Litwhiler, in just his eighth and ninth games in the Major Leagues, had one of the greatest offensive days in Phillies history. Litwhiler smashed out six hits, including a grand slam home run, a triple, a double, two singles and drove in a total of eight runs. In game one, Litwhiler's seventh inning, two-RBI double broke a 2-2 tie and sent the Phillies ahead 4-2. His grand slam off the Giants' Red Lynn in the eighth inning put the game out of reach. The Phillies won going away 11-2. In the second game, Litwhiler's sixth inning triple drove in two, tying the score at five. The Phillies won the game 6-5 in the 10th on a Bobby Bragan walk-off home run. Litwhiler's big day launched him into a 21-game hitting streak. In fact, after his August callup from the minor leagues, Litwhiler hit safely in 31 of the 33 games he started. He finished the season with a .345 batting average.

Daniel Webster Litwhiler was born in 1916 in the tiny Pennsylvania coal region town of Ringtown (pop 750). He followed several of his brothers in attending Bloomsburg State Teachers College (now Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania) about 20 miles from home. At Bloomsburg, Danny starred for the baseball team as an outfielder and graduated with a degree and a teaching certificate. Litwhiler began his professional career in the Detroit Tigers organization, while simultaneously pursuing a teaching job near the Tigers affiliate in Alexandria, Louisiana. A knee injury led to his being released by Detroit, but the Phillies owner Gerry Nugent and his farm system director John Ogden saw him work out and liked his hitting.  They signed him to a contract and agreed to pay for his knee surgery.

The surgery was performed by Dr. H. Carter Boyle, the Phillies team physician, at Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown, PA. The surgery was a success and after Danny was promoted to the Phillies and had that 21-game hitting streak at the end of the 1920 season, he thanked Dr. Boyle by giving him the bat he had used during the streak.

Great things were expected of Litwhiler in 1941, but he got off to a very slow start and by June 1 he was hitting just .236. Whispers around the league were that the new Phillies phenom was "just another false alarm." In desperation, Litwhiler called Dr. Boyle. "You remember that bat I used when I hit in those 21 straight games? Can I have it back?"

"I gave it away to a boy in Allentown," said the doctor, "but I'll try to get it back."

The next day Litwhiler and Dr. Boyle found the boy playing ball and doing some slugging of his own with the bat and induced him to part with it. No record exists of just what the inducement was, but Litwhiler came back with the bat. On June 2, with his lucky stick in hand Litwhiler went 3-for-4 with two home runs to help the Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs 3-2. Litwhiler tore up the league the rest of the year and finished with a .305 batting average, while leading the team with 18 home runs. *

Litwhiler had proven himself as a hitter, but he was a liability in the field. He made fourteen errors in the outfield in 1941. In spring training 1942 new manager Hans Lobert told Litwhiler that he noticed that Danny's errors all occurred on ground balls. He ordered Litwhiler to take infield practice with the second line infielders each day. The strategy worked spectacularly. Litwhiler set a major league record in 1942 by not making a single error in the field the entire season. In 151 games, mostly in left field, he made 308 put outs and 9 assists and made not one error. To recognize this accomplishment, Litwhiler's game glove from the 1942 season was placed on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Litwhiler's errorless streak stretched into the next season and through 187 games until he finally made an error on a rain soaked Shibe Park on May 20, 1943. That was the only error Litwhiler made for the entire 1943 season.

Now about that glove on display in Cooperstown. Litwhiler credited the glove, in part, for his record. As he told his Society for American Baseball Research biographer, Glen Vasey, "I may be wrong, but I think that my glove was the first one that had the fingers tied together by rawhide. I thought if I tied them together, if I catch the ball, maybe it would stay. Sure enough, during the time of the record, I fielded the ball two times right in the end of the fingers. No way in the world I would have caught [them] if it weren't tied together." ** By the 1950s almost all players were using gloves with the fingers tied together by rawhide.

Almost from the moment Litwhiler appeared in the Phillies lineup. rumors swirled about an impending trade to a contending team. The trade happened on June 1, 1943, when Danny was sent to the St. Louis Cardinals along with outfielder/pitcher Earl Naylor, for Buster Adams, Coaker Triplett, and Dain Clay. Litwhiler became a big part of the Cardinals teams that won back-to-back National League pennants in 1943 and 1944 and whipped the St. Louis Browns in the World Series in 1944.

Litwhiler had a productive 11-year Major League baseball career, including stints with the Cincinatti Reds and Boston Braves, as well as the Phillies and Cardinals. He finished with a career .281 batting average, 982 hits and 107 home runs. After he retired, he went on to a distinguished career as a coach for college teams, first at Florida State University and then at Michigan State. His philosophy was "teach baseball and the wins will come." He took FSU to the College World Series three times and is the all-time winningest coach in Michigan State history with a record of 488-362. His Michigan State teams won the Big Ten Championship twice. 

Danny was a great baseball teacher and also a great baseball innovator. Besides his innovation with the fingers of the baseball glove, he developed the first prototype of the JUGGS machine to calibrate the speed of pitches, Diamond Grit, used to dry out a wet field, and a special sawed-off bat to use in bunting instruction. In all, Litwhiler had more than 100 inventions credited to him.

Danny's autobiography, Living the Baseball Dream, written with Jim Sergent, was published by Temple University Press in 2006. Litwhiler died in 2011 in Clearwater, FL, at the age of 95.

* This account of the lost and found bat is taken from an article "Danny Litwhiler, Frilly Young Flychaser of Phillies", by Stan Baumgartner, published in The Sporting News, January 15, 1942.

** Glen Vasey, "Danny Litwhiler," Society for American Baseball Research. accessed on May 31, 2022.

Cartoon by Bob Coyne from The Sporting News, January 19, 1942