Veteran Right-Hander Strikes Out 13 Batters To Set A New Record In Taming N. L. Stars

Chicago, Oct. 9 – Howard J. Ehmke came back as a pitcher yesterday afternoon and it was one of the most dramatic and convincing “comebacks” that the game of baseball has ever known.

Once a great pitcher, Ehmke was ready for the discard. The old right arm had lost its cunning. The Athletics of Connie Mack were fighting for a pennant and so much depended on every game that Ehmke was not considered good enough to stand out there on the firing line. Only twice during the pennant race was he able to go the nine-inning route. He managed to eke out seven victories and was charged with only two defeats, but in only two of those games was he able to start and finish.

As his pitching skill faded, his popularity waned. Fans booed when he went to the hill. Unfortunately, he suffered minor injuries which frequently forced his withdrawal from regular duty. The fans didn’t like this. Even his comrades in arms lost confidence in him. He became an outcast and during the last Western road campaign of the Athletics, Ehmke was sent home. It was broadcast among the scandal mongers that Ehmke had been sent away from the team for the sake of harmony.

Connie Mack led his warriors home from that Western campaign and some writers happened to be in Philadelphia to observe the prospective American League champions.

Photographers were taking pictures and the pitching staff lined up for a group photograph.

Was “Big Bum” in September

“Look at that big bum, Ehmke, standing with the pitchers,” a Philadelphia telegraph operator remarked. “Say, he ain’t got no right to be with the pitchers. He’s a bum. Look, the other players don’t hardly talk to him. He’s a bum and whenever he gets into a tight game, he gets a stomach ache or a pulled tendon and he has to be taken out. He’s a bum and he ain’t got no guts.”

That was in September.

This is October and the name of Howard J. Ehmke has been broadcast throughout the land as the outstanding hero of the 1929 series for the baseball championship of the world. Howard J. Ehmke, the outcast of September, is the acclaimed in October.

No one questions his courage now. Howard J. Ehmke has come back.

Connie Mack, the aged leader of the Athletics, must share the glory with Ehmke. Mack undoubtedly will pass along the bouquets along to his pitcher, but don’t overlook the craft, the cunning and the astuteness of the veteran manager.

Needs No Sympathy Now

If ever the value of an understanding of psychology was demonstrated on a baseball field it was in this first game of the struggle between the Athletics of Philadelphia and Cubs of Chicago.

Early in September the baseball world began to ask who would pitch for the Athletics in the first game of the world series. It was fairly certain then that the rival teams would be the Cubs and the Athletics and baseball men throughout the country began to wonder, to themselves and in public prints, whether the left-handed Robert Moses Grove and Rube Walberg would be able to stop the right-handed sluggers of Joe McCarthy.

Doubt was the keynote of these rhetorical inquiries. Finally it was taken for granted that Grove and Walberg could not be expected to stop a team which included such right-handed fence busters as Rogers Hornsby, Hack Wilson, Kiki Cuyler and Riggs Stephenson. And the baseball world began to sympathize with Connie Mack because his main pitching reliances were of the left-handed persuasion.

And then George Earnshaw, a right-handed thrower of fastballs, began to stand out as a likely starting pitcher in the opening game.

Yes, that would be the only wise thing to do. It would be suicidal to send Walberg or Grove against the Cubs and it was taken for granted that it would be Earnshaw or one of the southpaws.

Mack Carried Psychological Effect To End When He Named Ehmke To Hurl

So widespread was this belief that Earnshaw would pitch that the Cubs began to take it for granted. And they began to take practice swings at fastballs propelled in batting practice by the right hands of pitchers. Then they began to take practice swings in their daydreams and when slumber came and the great games of slumberland were played in their sub-conscious minds, they slapped the ball for home runs that soared over fleecy clouds and grotesque fences. If there were occasional nightmares they were fastballs, so fast that they were impossible to see, much less hit.

Connie Mack carried the psychological effect right down to the wire. Not even on the eve of the series would he announce his starting pitcher. And as the teams gathered at Wrigley Field for the opening contest the Cubs were still taking swings in their mind’s eyes and at the plate at fastball pitching.

Sets Strikeout Record

And then at the last minute Connie Mack called Howard Ehmke to him and told him he was going to pitch. And how he pitched.

Ehmke struck out 13 batters , setting a new world series record for batters fanned in a nine inning game.

Ehmke had five consecutive strikeouts, fanning two batters to conclude the fifth inning and striking out the side in the sixth.

Ehmke struck out every batter on the Cubs team except Charlie Grimm and the catchers.

Ehmke struck out Rogers Hornsby twice and Hack Wilson twice and Kiki Cuyler twice.

Ehmke twice struck out Hornsby and Wilson in succession and in the third inning the score was nothing to nothing and the Cubs had runners on second and third base when he fanned the great Hornsby and the great Wilson.

Again in the seventh inning there were runners on second and third and the Athletics had a meager one-run lead when Ehmke tied the world series record by fanning pinch hitter Gabby Hartnett for his twelfth strikeout of the contest.

And that wasn’t all. One Chicago run was in and the tying runs were on the bases in the ninth inning when Ehmke struck out pinch hitter Tolson to end the game and to establish the new pitching record for a world series game.

Ehmke may have been an outcast in September. Even his comrades may have questioned his courage then. But they forgot all their mistrust in the face of the slender right-hander’s brilliant performance.

For an inning or two it appeared that even they doubted that Connie Mack had chosen wisely. But as inning passed after inning and Ehmke retained his mastery over the Chicago sluggers, the Athletics warmed up to Ehmke and before the game was over they were meeting him halfway to the dugout with words of encouragement and hearty slaps on the back. And when the contest was over and the outcast of September had pitched the American League champions to a brilliant victory, the Mackmen ran from the dugout and all but carried Ehmke to the dressing rooms.

Yes, Ehmke is one of the boys again and never again will they question his courage.

Connie Mack certainly knew his psychology. He was right about the Cubs and their expectations of seeing fastballs and more fastballs. And he was right when he surmised that they would not be able to readjust their batting sights during a ball game.

Batters who has been timing their swings to dazzling speed balls found that Ehmke was using only a half-speed sweeping curve.

Perhaps Connie Mack sent Ehmke home early in September so that he might practice on the half-speed curve. Perhaps while the other Mackmen were fighting to clinch the pennant, Ehmke was curving balls over the outside corner of the plate – half-speed balls of the common or roundhouse variety.

Certainly it appeared that Ehmke had been working to master such a delivery. And master it he did.

He Had Perfect Control

That’s all he fed Hornsby, Wilson, Cuyler and Stephenson. Occasionally, when some of the lesser slugger of the Cubs machine were at the plate, Ehmke would depart from the monotony of the roundhouse half-speed curve and throw something else. But whenever the hitter was a slugger or whenever the batter was tense, eager to slap the ball out of the lot, Ehmke called on that tantalizing slow curve. And always it did his bidding. It would start as though it was going to hit the batter. Slowly the spinning ball would break near the plate. When it reached the batter’s box it would be edging away from the plate and rarely did it cut more than the outside corner.

At first the Cubs swung at it viciously and felt foolish when they missed. They decided they were swinging at pitches which weren’t strikes. They tried waiting and for their pains they heard Bill Klem call strikes until they had to take the bats off their shoulders to get into the contest at all.

There have been great pitching feats in world series games. History tells of masterful performances by master pitchers. But there have been few exhibitions of pitching in these recent years, in these days of the lively ball and the home run swing to compare to the one Howard J, Ehmke delivered at Wrigley Field in the first contest of the 1929 series.

Had both teams played errorless ball, Ehmke would have scored a 1-0 shutout. Jimmy Foxx, the slugging first sacker of the Mackmen, hit a home run into the centerfield seats in the seventh inning for the only untainted run of the contest.

In the ninth inning, after Mickey Cochrane led off with a dingle to right, Woody English missed Simmon’s grounder and a chance for a double play, and then also fumbled Foxx’s grounder and another chance for a twin killing. Then with the bases filled, Bing Miller singles through the box and Cochrane and Simmons scored, making the score 3-0.

In the Chicago half of the ninth, Jimmy Dykes took Cuyler’s grounder after one was out and threw over Foxx’s head and Kiki reached second. Stephenson singles to center scoring Cuyler with the Cubs’ only run of the game.

Every seat at Wrigley Field was occupied and the crowd was naturally partisan. The people of Chicago had waited a long time to see the Cubs win another pennant and they wanted to see the boys get off to a good start in their quest for a world championship. But they soon perceived that they were sitting in at a great demonstration of pitching and as Ehmke added victim after victim to his string they forgot their sorrow at the downfall of the Cubs and gave credit to the unexpected hero.

Yes, Howard J. Ehmke has come back. The outcast of September is in good standing again.