Posted by Jtpsops on 7/10/2023 4:17:00 PM (view original):
Be interesting to see how the Ruth teams are doing overall.

I will include player win% for the $255M in my next Standings update. Through 80 games, Ruth owners are have an aggregate winning% of .509, but that includes just4me's overly-fatigued team (.263). Taking that out, and the average winning% is .521.

Funny story about ‘68 Gates Brown from the Dead Legends blog:

Back in ‘68, he hit .370 with a .442 OBP and helped the team win their third World Series.

But there’s one thing he’s never quite lived down.

During a game in early August of that ‘68 season, Brown was sitting the bench, per usual.

It was the middle of the game, and the team usually didn’t need his services until the later innings, so he and his teammate Norm Cash sent the bat boy up to grab them a couple of hot dogs.

As Brown was getting ready to devour the fully-loaded frankfurters, his manager, Mayo Smith (actual name) called for him to grab a bat.

Gates didn’t want Smith to see him eating, so he did what any of us would do - stuffed the wieners in his shirt and hoped for the best.

He went up to bat with the dogs hidden under his uniform, and in ‘94 he told the sporting news, “this was the one time in my career that I didn’t want to get a hit.”

Brown laced a ball into the gap, and sure enough, as he rounded for second, he was forced to slide head first.

When it was all said and done, Gates had ketchup, mustard, and “squashed meat” all over his uniform.

His teammates couldn’t contain themselves.

But Mayo Smith wasn’t as entertained.

He fined Brown $100.

Love that story. Using retrosheet, I tried to find the game in question.

Brown did hit a double during a game in early August (8/6, 2nd game of a doubleheader)... but he was in the starting lineup in that game.

Looking further, I assume the following elements of the story are true:
-- Brown hit a double
-- As a pinch hitter
-- In an earlier inning than usual, or in a situation (perhaps with Detroit way ahead?) in which he would not expect to be used.

Based on the story as described, it would ALSO seem to be a game in which Norm Cash was either not in the starting lineup, or had been removed from the game already.

Brown hit 7 doubles that season, so it isn't hard to check all the possible games. In two of them he was in the starting lineup (9/23, in addition to the 8/6 game referenced above). So those would seem to be ruled out.

The other 5 games:
6/3 at Boston: Brown pinch hit leading off the 9th with Detroit trailing 4-3. That doesn't seem to fit.
6/9 vs Cleveland: Brown pinch hit in the bottom of the 8th with Detroit trailing 2-0. That doesn't seem to fit.
7/21 vs Baltimore, 1st game of DH: Brown pinch hit in the bottom of the 7th with Detroit trailing 4-2. That doesn't seem to fit.
8/25 at New York, 1st game of DH: Brown pinch hit in the top of the 8th with Detroit trailing 6-5. That doesn't seem to fit.
9/20 at Washington: Brown pinch hit in the top of the 8th with 2 outs after Detroit had scored 4 runs to rally from a 3-2 deficit to take a 6-3 lead. That COULD be the game, but Norm Cash had just scored in the inning and (after one more batter made an out) went out to play the field in the 9th, so that doesn't quite fit either. But it is probably the most logical game for such a scenario. The Tigers had clinched the pennant, and had just gone ahead. Perhaps he figured Smith would leave Lolich in to finish the non-essential game, so maybe he ordered a celebratory hot dog after his team had taken the lead, thinking he might not be needed.

There are other possibilities of course if we accept that Brown’s memory may have slipped on some of the details. Maybe he hit a triple instead of a double. Maybe he hit a single and was thrown out stretching it. Maybe it didn’t happen in ‘68. Without checking boxscores exhaustively I can’t pinpoint the exact game. But I love this kind of thing (what Bill James used to call “tracers”).