When Life Gives You Bob Lemon, Make Him Pinch Hit
Plus ... "See You in Cooperstown" -- a new and trivial ebook
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Surprise! I didn’t expect to show up here today, but it turns out I had a little extra time and some Bob Lemon trivia burning a hole in my pocket.
Plus a new little ebook to talk about.
So, Happy July 1st!
1983 Donruss Hall of Fame Heroes Bob Lemon (#30) - Card of the Day
Hall of Fame hurler Bob Lemon made his last appearance in the major leagues on July 1, 1958…as a pinch hitter!
Lemon came on in the top of the eighth inning to hit for catcher Dick Brown with one out and the Tribe trailing the White Sox 4-1 at Comiskey Park. The righty hit into a fielder’s choice, with the Sox nabbing lead runner Rocky Colavito, leaving Lemon safe at first.
Lemon came home two batters later when Larry Doby went deep to tie the score and knock Sox reliever Gerry Staley out of the game. The score remained tied until the bottom of the 11th inning, when Sherm Lollar singled off Mudcat Grant with one out to drive in Jim Landis with the winning run for Chicago.
By then, both teams were on their fourth pitcher, with the Sox leaning on veteran right-hander Early Wynn in the top of the 11th. You might remember that Wynn and Lemon had been Cleveland teammates from 1948 through 1957.
That was a tidbit I first learned from the 1983 Donruss Hall of Fame Heroes set, where Lemon appears on card #30 and Wynn on #42.
These two guys have confused me ever since, as I detailed in some, uh, detail in this post.
As for the decision to bring Lemon in as a pinch hitter, it’s not as off-the-wall as it may seem at first blush. For one thing, Brown was hitting .243 coming into the game. More importantly, Lemon hit .232 with 37 home runs over the course of his career — not a tremendous batting line, but fairly miraculous for a pitcher.
Lemon also hit .288 in 117 career pinch-hitting opportunities, connecting on two long balls and driving in 25 runs.
And, finally, putting Lemon — who last pitched on June 29 — at the plate to finish his career introduced some delicious baseball symmetry. That’s because Lemon’s very first big league appearance came as a pinch hitter, too, on September 9, 1941.
In that one, Lemon stayed in the game at third base and recorded an assist on the final out of Bob Feller’s 13-7 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics.
Incidentally, four other players also made their debut in that game: Jim Hegan, Jack Conway, Buck Frierson, and Ray Poole.
Hegan, starting at catcher, homered that day, and he and Lemon would go on to play together in Cleveland through 1957. They even appeared in several of the same baseball card sets, beginning with 1950 Bowman and continuing through Lemon’s last card in the 1958 Topps set.
See You in Cooperstown! (new ebook)
All those coincidences and twists and turns involved in just Lemon’s first and last games are exactly the sorts of baseball minutiae that make my heart sing and can send me down a diamond rabbit hole for hours at a time.
And it seems doing that always leads to even more interesting stuff.
Did you know, for example, that Lemon appeared in the same game as fellow future Hall of Famer Tommy Lasorda exactly one time? Or that the same holds true for Lemon and Willard Brown?
Or Lasorda and Roberto Clemente?
Once I started pulling at this string, I had to unravel the whole thing and answer my own question…
Which Hall of Fame players appeared in one and only one regular-season game together?
That’s the subject of my first little ebook in what might become a series — I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I might start writing these as I uncover fascinating (to me, at least) bits of baseball history.
I’m calling this one See You in Cooperstown, and it’s a quick read on the surface — I detail five games featuring these one-and-done HOF pairings. But I also leave you with the complete list that I uncovered during my “research”…more than 250 in all, with links to the relevant Baseball Reference box scores.
Believe me, digging through those game logs is a great way to stoke the old nostalgia fires, find answers to questions you didn’t know you had, and wile away an afternoon, weekend, or a whole vacation if you’re not careful.
If you’re a paid subscriber to this newsletter, you can grab your copy (PDF and EPUB formats) on the Baseball Ebooks for Subscribers page. If not, you can subscribe (or sign up for a free trial) or purchase the ebook ($2) through Payhip.
Beware (and Behold) the Destruction Crew
I’ll leave you with one more card that has ties to Lemon’s last big league appearance — this 1959 Topps “Destruction Crew” masterpiece.
It’s always a good time for a Larry Doby card, and this one has some backstory to it, which you can read about right here.
And with that, I bid you adieu (even without an accompanying Expos card). Still not sure how active this newsletter will be this week or this month, but hey, I’m so glad we had this time together.
#IYKYK
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
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