What should have been baseball’s greatest pitching performance … undone by both bad luck ….. and a cruel decision years later, after the jump ….
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With the baseball playoffs about to get into full swing …. here is a look at a journeyman baseball pitcher (and later pitching coach) who was a 3x All-Star and also won three Gold Glove awards for his fielding as a pitcher. He won a World Series championship both as a player in 1960 (and as a pitching coach in 1979) and deserves more attention than merely as a hard-luck human being.
Harvey Haddix was born near Springfield, Ohio (seventy-five miles northeast of Cincinnati) in 1925. As a child, his first brush with bad luck came when (as a five year-old on a hunting trip) someone firing at a rabbit accidentally caught Harvey in a spray of buckshot, with five pieces of lead becoming embedded in his skull.
He saw in the newspaper that the St. Louis Cardinals were holding try-outs in Columbus, Ohio (during WW-II, when major league rosters were replete with either young or old players, ineligible to be drafted) and was signed as a 17 year-old, who pitched in the minor leagues for several years until 1952.
At only 5’9” and 150 lbs., he looked like a smaller version of the St. Louis pitching ace Harry (The Cat) Brecheen … and thus for a time, Haddix was known as “The Kitten”. In his first full season (1953) he went 20-9, and seemed destined for glory.
Then in 1954, he was pitching against the Milwaukee Braves — and was struck on his left knee by a line drive hit by slugger Joe Adcock (a name that will come up later). Haddix suffered nerve damage that caused him to alter his pitching motion. "I lost my spring after that," noted Haddix. “All the tendons on the left side of my knee were ruined." His Hall of Fame teammate Stan Musial wrote (in his autobiography):
“Haddix was a good pitcher who would have been great, in my opinion, if he hadn't lost something off his curve ball. He never was quite the same”.
Pitching inconsistently, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies (playing for the years of 1956 and 1957), then traded to Cincinnati for the 1958 season. He was then acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 1959 season in a multi-player deal that would pay dividends in the following year of 1960.
As a member of the Pittsburgh PiratesThat year of 1960, the Pittsburgh Pirates faced the New York Yankees in a memorable World Series — and Haddix was the starting (and winning pitcher) in Game 5, with relief help from Roy Face. Haddix then came on in relief in the 9th inning of the legendary Game 7— with two runners on base — yet was unable to hold the 2-run lead, as the Yankees tied the score 9-9. Still, Haddix turned out to be the winning pitcher as Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski homered in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the World Series on a walk-off. (Interestingly, that game is the only post-season baseball game in history in which nobody struck out … which is still true today).
Harvey Haddix was traded to the Baltimore Orioles in 1964, and was released by them just before the 1966 season (when the Orioles won the World Series), finishing with a won-loss record of 136-113. Often, people seeing him mistook him for Harry Brecheen, calling him “Harry” — and Haddix never corrected anyone.
Harvey Haddix then went on to a nearly twenty-year career as a pitching coach: first with the NY Mets from 1966-1967 (where he groomed future stars Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman) and with the Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians and lastly with Pittsburgh from 1979-1984 — and won another World Series ring with the Pirates during their championship season of 1979.
He returned to Springfield, Ohio to devote full-time to farming … when twenty-five years ago (in 1991) his wife Marcia answered the telephone to learn from a reporter that Harvey’s signature single-game achievement in 1959 … was being downgraded. And it is for this that Harvey Haddix suffered his worst hard-luck story of all.
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On May 26, 1959, a thirty-three year-old Harvey Haddix and his Pittsburgh teammates came to Wisconsin to play the Milwaukee Braves. The Braves were two-time defending National League champions (winning the 1957 World Series and losing the 1958 World Series, both in seven games) and later that year of 1959: lost a playoff series to the Los Angeles Dodgers, or else they would have played in a third straight World Series. The Braves had future Hall of Fame players Eddie Matthews and (a young) Hank Aaron in its starting line-up. Add to that, the fact that the Pirates were without the services of All-Star shortstop Dick Groat and future Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente … and so this was a tough opponent to face on their home field. (Side note: a twenty-five year-old future baseball commissioner Bud Selig was among the 20k attendees).
Before that day, there had been six games in baseball history when there had been a perfect game— where a pitcher faced twenty-seven batters, and not a single one reached base. (Since then, an additional seventeen perfect games have been pitched). And for thirty-two years, Harvey Haddix was on that list, having pitched a perfect game not just through nine innings (and twenty-seven batters) …. but twelve innings (and thirty-six batters), just breezing through the Braves’ lineup. His teammate Bill Mazeroski said later:
“Usually you have one or two great or spectacular defensive plays in these no-hitters …. not that night. It was the easiest game I ever played in."
Unluckily for Haddix: his teammates could not score a run against Braves pitcher Lew Burdette, who allowed twelve hits …. yet the Pirates hit into three double-plays that ended rallies. And so the game dragged on …. and on …. and on …..
In the bottom of the 13th inning, Haddix induced Felix Mantilla to hit a ground ball to the sure-handed third baseman Don Hoak …. who threw low to first base, resulting in an error that ended the perfect game (although not the no-hitter). After a sacrifice and an intentional walk to Hank Aaron, up to the plate came the man who five years earlier had damaged Haddix’ knee …. first baseman Joe Adcock. And this photo below shows Adcock rounding second after hitting the game-winning three-run homer …. well, it seemed like a three-run homer …..
Harvey Haddix’s great night … then ..In a bizarre twist: Hank Aaron at first didn’t see the ball go over the outfield fence, and turned for the dugout after reaching second (and seeing the winning run score). But since Joe Adcock had (then) passed him and reached third, he was called out and the umpires announced that the final score was 2-0. The next day, the National League ruled that the homer was only a double, and that the final score was 1-0. Either way, as the photo below shows: Harvey Haddix had lost.
Milwaukee fans did applaud HaddixHe gamely answered all reporter’s questions after the game, and walked the streets until dawn. Besides receiving a silver tea set from the Pirates: he turned down an offer to appear on the Ed Sullivan show (“I belong with my teammates”), received 58 telegrams via Western Union as well as numerous letters. One came from a Texas A&M fraternity (on college stationery) which read:
"Dear Harvey ….…….. tough shit."
"It made me mad", recounted Haddix, "until I realized they were right. That's exactly what it was."
In 1989, at a gathering to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the game — one of the Braves pitchers at that time was Bob Buhl— who pulled Haddix aside and told him:
“You know we were stealing signs during the game?"
The Pirates catcher Smokey Burgess was so heavy, he could not squat down very well: and as a result, the fingers he used to indicate to Haddix what the next pitch should be could be seen by the opposing team (with binoculars) from the bullpen. They flashed a towel (if the next pitch was a fastball) and none if it was not. And still they could do nothing against Haddix for twelve innings.
In his later years, Haddix allowed that “Not a day goes by that somebody doesn’t ask me about that game — I think I got more notoriety from it because I lost” … which he claimed to be more upset about, saying he would have rather pitched a more typical game and had won. His wife noted that he never talked about that night, preferring to speak about the 1960 World Series championship. And in yet another sign of bad luck: his World Series ring was stolen from a hotel room in his next-to-last season as a pitching coach in 1983.
Still, he had a consolation: baseball records did list his achievement under “Baseball’s Perfectly Pitched games” category, with an asterisk * (that referred to a footnote, explaining the bizarre 13th inning). And though using an asterisk * became controversial two years later, when Roger Maris had his 61 home-run season record listed in some (not all) places with an asterisk, due — as a result of expansion — to the length of the season going from 154 to 162 games (as commissioner Ford Frick hated the idea of Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homers being eclipsed) …. in Harvey Haddix’s case, it seemed like a reasonable compromise.
At least, until that phone call his wife answered twenty-five years ago. In 1991, baseball had convened a Committee for Statistical Accuracy to review its records. And they changed the definition of no-hitters and perfect games as “completing a game of nine innings or more without allowing a hit”. Several records were downgraded for various reasons besides his.
One was a perfect game that was downgraded for the Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore. In 1917, the Red Sox starting pitcher was named Babe Ruth (before he was moved to the outfield) and complained about the umpire’s calls that resulted in the lead-off batter walking. Ruth kept it up and — after threatening bodily harm to the umpire — was ejected .. and actually started a brawl. Ernie Shore came on in relief, retired the base-runner (who was thrown out trying to steal second) … and retired the next twenty-six batters. Since he had recorded twenty-seven put-outs, he was credited with a perfect game.
The 1991 committee downgraded this to a combined no-hitter, which is sad … yet I can understand it. Although Shore had recorded twenty-seven put-outs, he did not face twenty-seven batters. The San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Moore lost a no-hitter a few weeks ago facing batter number twenty-seven, as have many others. Plus, Ernie Shore did have his name retained as being part of a no-hitter … and by the time of the 1991 downgrade …. he had been dead since 1980, anyway.
Harvey Haddix, though was still alive in 1991 … and his record was eliminated completely. The Committee defended itself by adding a footnote to the list of records …. but which is only read by people such as those on the committee. The response around the baseball world was swift, and Bill Mazeroski spoke for many in saying, “What Major League Baseball ruled wasn’t right — 27 up, 27 down is a perfect game … why not 36 up, 36 down?” Marcia Haddix said that when she got off the phone with the reporter, “I was so angry”. But when she told her husband, the stoic pitcher replied:
“It’s OK …….. I know what I did”.
Harvey Haddix was a chain smoker through much of his life (even smoking one in the dugout between innings that night). He was warned by many of his old friends, including teammate Vernon Law— “Harve, this is gonna kill you if you don’t stop smoking. And eventually, it did”.
Harvey Haddix died of emphysema in early January, 1994 at the age of 68 in Springfield, Ohio. His signature achievement was highlighted in 2009 (fifty years after that night) with this book by Lew Freedman— although I believe the title is off-base: it should be The Greatest Game Ever Pitched.
Published in 2009Harvey Haddix was also commemorated in song, by a collective known as the Baseball Project— including two members of R.E.M. (Peter Buck and Mike Mills) — and below you can hear it.
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