Still Constipated
Saturday, July 16, 1927: On the Train to St. Louis
Friday, the still chronically constipated Schoolboy Hoyt started our last game in Cleveland. His arm’s still killing him, and this time he lasted barely four innings before he was sent to the showers (and the toilet) with the score 5–3.
Pipgras relieved Schoolboy, but only lasted another inning — giving up a run on a double and a wild pitch, to make it 6–3 Cleveland. I followed Big George, pitching the bottom of the seventh and eighth.
Over two innings, I faced 10 batters and gave up three runs (only one of them earned). It was another less-than-mediocre performance.
Huggins lifted me in the top of the ninth for a pinch hitter, Benny Pascal, who doubled to center to start a four run rally that wins the game for us, 10–9.
Because I was the pitcher of record when we scored in the ninth — even though I was taken out just before all the fireworks began and watched it all just as if I’d bought a ticket to the game — baseball’s scoring rules give me the win.
So my record now is 7–3. Definitely something to write home about. (My ERA, though, is now 3.91. Definitely not something to write home about.)
This morning at breakfast, looking through the newspapers, I saw that my favorite writer aside from Gallico — Richards Vidmer of the New York Times — had written this about yesterday’s game:
You may sing of the ancient Orioles. You may chant of the glory that was the Cubs a score of years ago. You may harken back to the Athletics before the wreckage. But before anyone starts making any broad statements concerning those famous teams of a past baseball era, let him consider the frolicking, rollicking, walloping Yanks of the present.
Yup.
