In anticipation of next week's All-Star game, this post will recall one of the greatest pitching achievements not just of the midsummer classic, but in all baseball history. At the 1934 All-Star game, the Giants Carl Hubbell struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin, all future Hall of Famers, in succession. It's no surprise Hubbell, who was also headed to Cooperstown, chose the game as his greatest day in baseball. But when asked immediately afterwards how he felt, Hubbell said simply “Low, we lost.” That's a reminder of how important winning and losing the All-Star used to be. At the time and, at least until I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, the result mattered.
This is not in any way to suggest that Hubbell’s accomplishments didn’t receive due credit at the time. American League manager, Joe Cronin, and Hubbell’s fifth victim, claimed Hubbell was the “best pitcher I’ve ever seen.” Nor were media accolades wanting. Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News illustrated the magnitude of Hubbell’s achievement by estimating some of the probabilities of what did and didn't happen. With two men on, none out and Ruth, Gehrig and Foxx coming up, Gallico projected the odds the American League wouldn't score at least once were 500 to 1. Even greater, he thought, were the odds against Hubbell striking the three out in order which Gallico put at 1000 to 1.
The fans also appreciated what they had witnessed. Legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice broke it down like this:
Hubbell strikes out Gehrig – “The stands began to rock”
Hubbell strikes out Foxx – “Even those supporting the American League stood up to pay him tribute.”
It's no wonder sportswriter Lee Scott called Hubbell's All-Star game performance "the greatest thrill that baseball enthusiasts could ever hope for.”
In his account of that historic day, Hubbell not only described the game but also explained his pitching strategy. According to Hubbell, his catcher Gabby Hartnett, told him to throw his screwball for strikes and to waste (throw outside the strike zone) everything else. Although out of fashion today, Hubbell used the screwball to dominate baseball for a decade. From 1929 to 1938, he won 195 games with a 2.81 ERA (the best in the majors) and earned two Most Valuable Player awards. Joe Cronin’s opinion of Hubbell didn't come from one at bat in the All-Star game. A year earlier in the World Series, pitching against player-manager Cronin’s Washington Senators, the Giants left-hander didn’t allow an earned run in 20 innings.
As far as control and “stuff” is concerned, I never had any more in my life than for that All-Star game in 1934. But I never was a strikeout pitcher like Bob Feller or “Dizzy” Dean or “Dazzy” Vance. My style of pitching was to make the other team hit the ball, but on the ground. It was as big a surprise to me to strike out all those fellows as it probably was to them. Before the game, Hartnett and I went down the lineup . . . Gehringer, Manush, Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Simmons, Cronin, Dickey and Gomez. There wasn’t a pitcher they’d ever faced that they hadn’t belted one off him somewhere, sometime.
The New York Daily News - July 11, 1934
We couldn’t discuss weaknesses . . . they didn’t have any, except Gomez. Finally Gabby said: We’ll waste everything except the screwball. Get that over, but keep your fast ball and hook outside. We can’t let ‘em hit in the air.” So that’s the way we started. I knew I had only three innings to work and could bear down on every pitch.
They talk about those All-Star games being exhibition affairs and maybe they are, but I’ve seen very few players in my life who didn’t want to win, no matter who they were playing or what for. If I’m playing cards with pennies, I want to win. How can you feel any other way? Besides, there were 50,000 fans or more there, and they wanted to see the best you’ve got. There was an obligation to the people, as well as to ourselves, to go all out. I can recall walking out to the hill in the Polo Grounds that day and looking around the stands and thinking to myself: “Hub, they want to see what you’ve got.”
New York Daily News - July 11, 1934
Gehringer was first up and Harnett called for a waste ball just so I’d get the feel of the first pitch. It was a little too close, and Charley singled. Down from one of the stands came a yell: “Take him out!”
I had to laugh.
Terry took a couple of steps off first and hollered: “That’s all right,” and there was Manusch at the plate. If recollect rightly, I got two strikes on him, but then he refused to swing any more, and I lost him. He walked. This time Terry and Frisch and “Pie” Traynor all came over to the mound and began worrying. “Are you all right?” Bill asked me. I assured him I was. I could hear more than one voice from the stands: “Take him out before it’s too late.”
Well, I could imagine how they felt with two on, nobody out and Ruth at bat. To strike him out was the last thought on my mind. The thing was to make him hit on the ground. He wasn’t too fast, as you know, and he’d be a cinch to double. He never took the bat off his shoulder. You could have pushed me over with your little finger. I fed him three straight screwballs, all over the plate, after wasting a fast ball, and he stood there. I can see him looking at the umpire on “You’re out,” and he wasn’t mad. He just didn’t believe it, and Hartnett was laughing when he threw the ball back.
So up came Gehrig. He was a sharp hitter. You could double him, too, now and then, if the ball was hit hard and straight at an infielder. That’s what we hoped he’d do, at best. Striking out Ruth and Gehrig in succession was too big an order. By golly, he fanned . . . and on four pitches. He swung at the last screwball and you should have heard the crowd. I felt a lot easier then, and even when Gehringer and Manusch pulled a double steal and got to third and second, with Foxx up, I looked down at Hartnett and caught the screwball sign, and Jimmy missed. We were really trying to strike Foxx out, with two already gone and Gabby didn’t bother to waste any pitches. I threw three more screwballs, and he went down swinging. We had set down the side on 12 pitches, and then Frisch hit a homer in our half of the first, and we were ahead.
It was funny, when I thought about it afterwards, how Ruth and Gehrig looked as they stood there. The Babe must have been waiting for me to get the ball up a little so he could get his bat under it. He always was trying for that one big shot at the stands, and anything around his knees, especially a twisting ball, didn’t let him get any leverage. Gehrig apparently decided to take one swing at least and he beat down at the pitch, figuring to take a chance on being doubled if he could get a piece of the ball. He whispered something to Foxx as Jim got up from the batter’s circle and while I couldn’t hear it, I found out later he said: “You might as well cut . . . it won’t get any higher.” At least Foxx wasted no time.
Of course the second inning was easier because Simmons and Cronin both struck out with nobody on base and then I got too close to Dickey and he singled. Simons and Foxx, incidentally both went down swinging and I know every pitch to them was good enough to hit at and those they missed had a big hunk of the plate. Once Harnett kinda shook his head at me as if to say I was getting too good. After Dickey came Gomez and as he walked into the box he looked down at Gabby and said: “You are now looking at a man whose batting average is .104. What the hell am I doing up here? He was easy after all those guys and we were back on the bench again.
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