Tagged: baseball

Vance Dazzles against Cubs, Cards

(This is the sixth in a series that celebrates the 100th anniversary of Dazzy Vance’s great 1924 season with the Brooklyn Robins.)

By Glen Sparks

Dazzy Vance started two games in the fifth week of the 1924 season and won both of them. He beat the Chicago Cubs on May 12 at Cubs Park and the St. Louis Cardinals on May 17 at Sportsman’s Park.

Brooklyn’s ace hurler battled through a troublesome second inning against Chicago. The Cubs scored three times and took a 3-2 lead before 6,500 fans. The Dazzler gave up just two hits the rest of the way.  He struck out five and walked one. Brooklyn came from behind to win, 7-3. Cubs fielders “shivered and shook,” Irving Vaughan wrote in the Chicago Tribune, and committed four errors. Dazzy improved to 4-1, and Brooklyn snapped a three-game losing streak. Zack Wheat, who went 2-for-4, upped his batting average to .446 with a 1.158 OPS.

Vaughan wrote that the second inning was “the only time the Cubs looked as if they might be bent on a surprise party for Vance.”

From Chicago, the Dodgers stepped aboard a train bound for St. Louis and a four-game series. Brooklyn won the first two and lost the third, 6-5, in 11 innings. Vance faced Jesse Haines in the finale. Haines was a 30-year-old right-hander who won 20 games in 1923 with a 3.11 ERA  (125 ERA+). He threw a fastball, a curveball, and—since the previous season—a knuckleball.

About 11,000 fans, including 3,000 from the local knot-hole gang, filed into Sportsman’s Park.  St. Louis grabbed a 1-0 lead in the second inning, and, after Brooklyn tied the score in the third, went ahead 3-1 in the fourth as  Vance allowed four hits and RBI singles to Mike Gonzalez and Max Flack. The great slugger Rogers Hornsby struck out to end the frame. “Vance proved superior to the demon slugger,” Martin J. Haley wrote in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Brooklyn waited until the ninth inning to knot things up. Fournier hit a solo homer, while DeBerry’s double scored High, who also had doubled.

Both Vance and Haines kept pitching in extra innings. Jack Fournier led off the top of the 13th with a base hit and went to second on Milt Stock’s sacrifice bunt. Tommy Griffith followed with an RBI single. The next two hitters, Andy High and Hank DeBerry, both grounded out.

Dazzy struck out Jim Bottomly to begin the bottom half of the 13th.  Heine Mueller popped out in foul territory to DeBerry, and Howard Freigau flied out to Griffith.

Vance fanned 10, scattered 12 hits, and retired the side in order five times, “On numerous occasions,” Haley wrote, “Vance simply whizzed the ball past the batters.” Dazzy allowed just one extra-base hit and was now 5-1. His ERA dropped to 2.23. Brooklyn was 14-13, or 9-12 in games not started by Dazzy Vance.

Vance Wins another Braves Outing; Improves to 3-1

(This is the fifth in a series that celebrates the 100th anniversary of Dazzy Vance’s great 1924 season with the Brooklyn Robins/Dodgers.)

By Glen Sparks

About 20,000 fans filed into Ebbets Field on Sunday, May 4. The men wore suits and bowler hats, and smoked cigars. The ladies wore dresses. Some may have brought along a parasol.

From the main entrance, fans stepped into an 80-foot enclosed circle made of Italian marble.The famous Ebbets Field rotunda also boasted floor tiles that looked like baseball stitching and a chandelier with 12 baseball-bar arms that held 12 baseball-shaped lights. Leaving the rotunda, fans looked out at home plate and saw a lush green diamond.

Vance stood atop the Ebbets Field mound. He was big man at 6-feet-2-inches, 210 pounds and had a rather bulbous nose. His cap hid a shock of thick red hair. He had fair skin.

Like many pitchers from that day, Vance boasted a big leg kick and a long wind-up. As a play-by-play man might say, he kicked and fired. Dazzy, as reported in a 2007 biography, described his pitching style thusly: “I, for one, can’t slow ‘em.” During his early days, he continued, “I noticed the slow ones got picked a lot.”

The Boston Braves were in town. Just a few days earlier, on April 30 at Braves Field, Vance and the  Dodgers won, 6-4, in 11 innings.

Boston took a 2-0 lead in the third inning of the rematch on RBI hits from Stuffy McInnis and ”the ever-adept” Casey Stengel. Brooklyn “wrought vengeance aplenty” by scoring four runs in the fourth. Zack Wheat got things going with a lead-off single against Boston starter Joe Genewich, a 27-year-old right-hander from Elmira, New York. Jack Fournier grounded out before Genewich beaned Milt Stock. Tommy Griffth and Andy High followed with back-to-back RBI singles. Hank DeBerry, Vance’s personal catcher, tripled home two more runs.

The Dodgers scored a solo run in the fifth. Jimmy Johnston and Wheat began the rally by rapping out base hits. Fournier hit into a double play that brought home Johnston. One inning later, a two-run single from Bernie Neis gave Brooklyn a 7-2 lead. Boston closed out the scoring in the seventh. Johnny Cooney and Bill Cunningham started the rally with base hits. McInnis also singled, and Cooney scampered home.

Dazzy scattered 10 hits in gaining his third win against one loss and pitched his fourth straight complete game. He gave up the three earned runs and upped his ERA slightly, from 1.82 to 2.09. Vance struck out eight Braves. Marshall Hunt from the New York Daily News wrote about “the iron arm of Mr. Dazzy Vance” that was “wound and unwound with an artistic motion satisfying the most critical.”  Yes, Vance allowed 10 hits, but, Hunt wrote, he so painstakingly apportioned these throughout the pastime.” The Boston Globe praised Dazzy, “exponent of the smoke ball.”

Brooklyn was now 8-8 on the season, in fourth place.

(Note: The unattributed quotes in this post were taken from Marshall Hunt’s May 5 article in the New York Daily News.)

Dazzy Fans Nine, Gets First Win of ’24 in a Giants Rematch

(This is the third in a series that celebrates the 100th anniversary of Dazzy Vance’s great 1924 season with the Brooklyn Dodgers/Robins.)

By Glen Sparks

Dazzy Vance made his 1924 Ebbets Field debut on Friday afternoon, April 25, against the New York Giants, the team that beat him eight days earlier at the Polo Grounds.

About 8,000 fans filed into Brooklyn’s home ballpark, named for Charles Ebbets, the team’s owner and president. Located in the Flatbush neighborhood, Ebbets Field opened in 1913.

Vance’s mound opponent was Wayland Dean, the Giants rookie and winning pitcher on April 17.  Dean apparently had some musical talent. A writer for the New York Press and Sun-Bulletin described him as “the lad from Louisville who sings, dances, recites, plays a guitar, and throws a baseball with considerable skill and cunning. He is paid for his last accomplishment, but tosses the others in gratis.” (Baseball-reference.com lists Dean as a native of West Virginia. The right-hander pitched for the Louisville Colonels in 1922 and 1923.)

Dazzy allowed a two-out double to Frankie Frisch in the first inning before retiring Ross Youngs on a pop up. Travis Jackson hit a two-out single in the second inning but was caught stealing with Frank Snyder at bat.

Brooklyn put across one run in the bottom half of the second. Dean walked Tommy Griffith and Hank DeBerry to start the frame. After Joe Klugman hit into a force out, advancing Griffith to third base, Binky Jones lifted a run-scoring flyball into deep leftfield. Vance singled; Bernie Neis grounded out.

Over the first five innings. Vance scattered six hits without giving up a run. He struck out five batters. Irish Meusel hit a one-out, two-run homer in the sixth inning to give New York a 2-1 lead. Paul Galico from the New York Daily News called the home run “a man-sized drive.”

Blinky began the game-winning rally after reaching on an error in the seventh inning. Dazzy hit into a force out, and Neis knocked a two-run homer, putting the Robins ahead by the final score of 3-2.  Galico wrote, “A home run at the right moment, somehow or other, is as conclusive as a gatling gun.”

Both pitchers went the distance. Vance faced the minimum six batters over the final two innings and struck out three Giants, including rookie Bill Terry to end the game. (Terry went on to bat .341 lifetime and .401 in 1930.)

Dazzy finished with nine punchouts. According to Galico, “Four young men in the press box caught cold from the breeze kicked up by fanning Giants.” Charles S. Rice from the Brooklyn Eagle decided, “Vance looked a bit better yesterday than he did eight days before, because of the deadly proficiency with which he fanned Giants in pinches.”

The Robins improved to 4-4 on the young season, while the Giants dropped to 6-2. Vance evened his mark at 1-1 and lowered his ERA to 2.41.

Dazzy Loses ’24 Opener to the Giants

(This is the second in a series that celebrates the 100th anniversary of Dazzy Vance’s great 1924 season with the Brooklyn Dodgers/Robins.)

By Glen Sparks

Dazzy Vance started his first game of 1924 on Thursday, April 17, against the New York Giants, the reigning National League pennant winners. It was the finale of a three-game series at the Polo Grounds.

Vance followed Dutch Reuther and Burleigh Grimes in Brooklyn’s starting rotation. Reuther drew the opening-day assignment. More than 44,000 fans filed into the ballpark. The New York Daily News described an afternoon filled with “bright sunshine, the hoisting of flags, playing of bands, and the annual march across the field by the mayor.”

The Robins grabbed a 3-0 lead and held on to win, 3-2.  The News reported, “Thousands of Brooklyn fans were banked in the stand behind third base. They had a great day. Alderman (Stephen) McKeever was among the Brooklyn rooters. Everyone in the park heard him.”

Grimes, a spitball artist and future Hall of Famer, started and lost the next day, 7-1, to veteran left-hander Jack Bentley in Game Two. The Robins made three errors in front of 15,000 fans.  “When a team is thrashed as Our Robins were yesterday at the hands of the champion Giants,” Charles Segar wrote in the Brooklyn Citizen, “no alibi can be offered.”  Thomas Meany of the Brooklyn Times-Union lamented the “misfortunes” of “spitball ace” Grimes, “the pride and joy of every normal being on the right side of the bridge.”

Vance went up against Wayland Dean, who was making his major-league debut, in the series finale with only 5,000 fans watching. The writer Frank Graham described Dazzy’s pitching style thusly: “He reared back, kicked his left foot high and catapulted the ball overhand. It exploded past the batter or swerved away. Although his speed excited the fans, it was his control of his curve that excited his manager.”

Brooklyn took a 2-0 lead in the first inning on solo home runs by third baseman Jimmy Johnston and first baseman Jack Fournier. New York got one run back in the bottom of the first on a Ross Youngs RBI single that scored Frish, who had reached on a fielder’s choice and stole second base.

The game settled into a pitchers’ duel over the next several innings. New York tied the score in the fifth on Heine Groh’s two-run homer.

Groh also began the game-winning rally with one-out in the 10th. He singled off Vance and advanced to third on a Frisch base hit. Dazzy intentionally walked Youngs to load the bases. Irish Meusel lifted a weak flyball  to Tommy Griffith in right field, too shallow for Groh to tag up and score. George Kelly followed by hitting an RBI single into left-center field and giving the Giants a 3-2 victory.

Dazzy, the losing pitcher, allowed nine hits over his 9 2/3 innings. He struck out four batters and walked three. “Vance was using a fast ball, fast curves, and everything else that was fast,” Thomas S. Rice wrote in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “His control is good and so is his nerve.”