September 6, 2009
Left-handed throwing second basemen, shortstops and third basemen
Posted in Baseball at 4:32 pm by prestonjg
While right-handed throwers can be found at any of the nine positions on a baseball field, left-handers are, in practice, restricted to five of them. You won’t find a lefty at catcher, second base, shortstop or third base. It’s extremely awkward for a left-handed-handed throwing second baseman to turn the pivot in a double play, which I’m guessing is the biggest reason you don’t see lefties there. It’s extremely difficult for a lefty charging a bunt from third base to make a throw to first. And lefty shortstops lose time getting themselves in position to throw.
The last left-handed thrower to play second base in a major league game was Don Mattingly, who was on the field for one batter when the Yankees and Royals resumed the famed “pine-tar” game in 1983. Note that Ron Guidry was the Yankees’ center fielder at that same time; neither got near the ball as Hal McRae struck out. Bert Campaneris had been the Yankees’ second baseman during the original game on July 24, but he was on the disabled list when the game resumed on August 18. (Guidry was playing center because Jerry Mumphrey had been traded in the interim. It wasn’t his first appearance in the outfield; he had played center in the ninth inning of a blowout win on the next-to-last day of the 1979 season.)
But the last left-handed thrower to earn a fielding chance at second base in a major league game? Now that’s an unusual story. Because he was normally a pitcher.
On July 6, 1970, in Cleveland, the Indians hosted the Washington Senators in a “battle” between the two teams at the bottom of the AL East standings. 
Sam McDowell took an 11-4 record to the mound for the Indians. The Senators scored two runs in the first inning and two more in the third to jump on top 4-0, but Cleveland rallied and took a 6-4 lead when Duke Sims hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth.
That’s the way the score stood going into the visitors’ half of the eighth. The Senators got singles from Ed Stroud and Eddie Brinkman, and a wild pitch by McDowell moved the runners to second and third with one out. McDowell struck out Tom Grieve, but that brought the dangerous Frank Howard to the plate as the potential go-ahead run. Hondo had hit 44 home runs in 1968, 48 in 1969, and had already hit 21 in his first 79 games of the 1970 season (he would finish the year with 44).
McDowell had already faced 38 batters and had allowed 11 hits and walked five. He’d also struck out 12, and while pitch counts weren’t in box scores in those days and were rarely reported in the press, he must have thrown a lot of pitches by then. With Howard and the next four hitters after him all right-handed hitters, it would seem to be a good time for Cleveland manager Al Dark to bring in a fresh right-handed pitcher. Which he did, summoning Dean Chance to the mound. But Dark didn’t take McDowell out of the game. He put Chance in the lineup in place of third baseman Graig Nettles, who had made the Indians’ last out in the seventh; he moved Eddie Leon from second base to third; and he left McDowell in the game–as the second baseman, giving him the option of returning McDowell to the mound.
Chance intentionally walked Howard to load the bases and set up a force at any base. That brought Rick Reichardt to the plate…who hit a ground ball to Leon at third, Leon then threw to McDowell to get the force on Howard at second base. George Minot, Jr., in his account of the game in the next day’s Washington Post, wrote Leon could have just as easily touched third base to get the force out there or thrown to first to get the final out. Unfortunately, Minot did not have any comments from Leon, McDowell or Dark about the ploy.
By the way, McDowell returned to the mound in the ninth and struck out the side, giving him 15 strikeouts for the game, tying his season high. He would never strike out that many batters in a game again.
Later in the season Dark moved McDowell off the mound in another game against the Senators and sent him to first base, a more conventional position for a left-handed thrower. That didn’t turn out as well…but we’ll save details for a future post.
McDowell’s appearance as a left-handed second baseman was unusual enough to merit mention in the subhead of the Post’s game story…Minot mentioned no one
could remember the last time it happened. That’s because they didn’t have Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference.com back then. But since I have that advantage, I can tell you that the last time a lefty had played second base was in 1958…and that led to a change in the official rules of baseball.
It was June 14, 1958, the Cincinnati Reds (known as the Redlegs in those cold-war, Commie-hating days) playing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Bobby Thomson, he of shot-heard-round-the-world fame, led off the bottom of the second for the Cubs, bringing pitcher John Briggs to the plate (not to be confused with the John “Breek” Briggs who played the outfield for the Phillies, Brewers and Twins from 1964-75). Here’s the way Edgar Munzel described what happened next in The Sporting News:
With Bobby Thomson on first base, none out and a sacrifice obviously in order with Pitcher Johnny Briggs at the plate, [Cincinnati Manager Birdie] Tebbetts had First Baseman George Crowe and Second Baseman Johnny Temple switch positions.
Tebbetts wanted to take advantage of Temple’s speed to charge in on the bunt and the strategy paid off when Temple speared Briggs’ pop fly for a double play. [Temple threw the ball to Crowe--who had rotated to cover first as you would on a bunt--to double off Thomson, so Crowe got credit for a putout as a second baseman--standing on first!]
It brought a quick challenge from Manager Bob Scheffing of the Cubs because Crowe was playing second base with a big first baseman’s “mitt” instead of a fielder’s “glove,” as such equipment is defined in the rules book.
The umpires, however, pointed out that the rules do not expressly forbid the practice.
Rule 1.14 states: “Each fielder, other than the first baseman and the catcher, MAY wear a leather glove . . .”
It does not say SHALL or MUST and, therefore, Frank Dascoli and Augie Donatelli of the umpire crew working that series in Wrigley Field sought a specific ruling that night from [National League] President [Warren] Giles.
Giles immediately declared that the interpretation of the rule for the National League would be that only the first baseman and the catcher can wear a “mitt” and anyone playing any other position must wear the regular fielder’s “glove.”
“Tebbets and any other manager can still make the same shift, but if the first baseman plays second base he must put on a glove,” said Dascoli. “You can’t have everybody in the infield wearing one of those big nets.”
The last lefty to record an assist as a second baseman was Hall of Famer Jim Bottomley of the St. Louis Cardinals, during his only appearance at the position on August 29, 1924. Bottomley started at first base, his usual position, with Rogers Hornsby at second. But Hornsby left the game after the fourth inning with a wrenched back, and his replacement, Ray Blades, was ejected for arguing a called third strike in the top of the ninth. So in the bottom of the inning, with the Cardinals leading 12-3, manager Branch Rickey moved center fielder Heinie Mueller (also a left-handed thrower) to first base and shifted Bottomley to second. Joe Bratcher entered the game in center field for the Cards; it would be his only appearance in the field in a major league game and his last appearance in the bigs ever (he also pinch-hit once and pinch-ran twice). The Chicago Tribune game story noted that the Cardinals “finished with a left-hander playing second base. Rickey is original, if nothing else.”
The last lefty to commit an error as a second baseman was another Hall of Famer, George Sisler, who was also the last lefty to spend any significant time playing second base in the majors. He made two starts at the position for the St. Louis Browns in 1917, with two putouts, five assists and two errors (one in each game). His first start was on May 23 in a home game against the Red Sox, with his final appearance coming May 29 at Chicago. Sisler also started two games at third base in 1916.
A couple of lefties who played second base without receiving a fielding chance…Lefty Stewart made an appearance there for the 1933 American League champion Washington Senators. It was his only major league appearance as anything other than a pitcher. And in 1920, Hall of FamerEdd Roush, normally a center fielder, finished the final game of the season at second base. From the looks of the box score, maybe Roush’s Reds were just having some fun, as three other players finished the game at positions where they didn’t start.
Hal Chase, considered one of the finest fielding first basemen of all time (in addition to being considered a despicable human being), actually saw quite a bit of time at second base, playing35 games there between 1905 and 1916, 16 of them in 1916.
Chase is also the last lefty to record a fielding chance at shortstop in a major league game, making three putouts in two games at the position as a rookie in 1905. Since 1910, almost all left-handers listed as “shortstops” were designated as such on the lineup card, batted in the top of the first inning and then came out of the game before taking the field. The most recent of these was Mark Ryal, an outfielder and occasionally a first baseman. OnSeptember 4, 1987, Angels manager Gene Mauch listed Ryal on his lineup card as the shortstop and had him bat leadoff in a game at Yankee Stadium. Ryal flied out to center field, and then Dick Schofield entered the game to actually play shortstop in the bottom of the first.
Tom Chism, a left-handed first baseman who had some good years at the plate in the minors, made his major league debut under similar circumstances as a “shortstop.” Orioles manager Earl Weaver put Chism on his lineup card at shortstop, batting second, on September 13, 1979, at Toronto, and after Chism flied out, Kiko Garcia entered the game as the real shortstop. Chism would also start a game at “catcher” on September 19, grounding into a double play before letting Dave Skaggs don the tools of ignorance. Those two games were Chism’s only major league starts. His only other plate appearance was a ground out after he replaced Eddie Murray at first base on September 23. Weaver also listed left-handed Royle Stillman on his lineup card at shortstop in six road games in September 1975, replacing him when the Orioles took the field.
Another left-handed “shortstop” wasLou Gehrig, who kept his consecutive-games streak alive with just such a phantom appearance at Detroit on July 14, 1934 (see details on Gehrig’s Wikipedia listing).
The story of lefthanded “shortstop”Nino Escalera is the subject of its own blog post.
Speaking of lefties “playing” second base…in 1973, the first year of the designated hitter, Oakland A’s manager Dick Williams came up with what he must have thought was a bright idea. Since neither of his second basemen, Dick Green and Ted Kubiak, was much of a hitter, Williams hit upon putting somebody else in his lineup as the second baseman on the road and then putting in his real second baseman after the imposter batted in the top of the first. Over six consecutive games, May 23-28, at Cleveland at Baltimore, Williams listed either Gonzalo Marquez, Jay Johnstone, Billy Conigliaro or Angel Mangual at second base. Marquez was a lefty, so his appearance on May 5 at Cleveland marks the last time a lefty was on the lineup card as a second baseman in a major league game. Williams abandoned the tactic after his phantom second basemen combined to go 0-for-5 with a walk, although twice the batter reached base on an error.
The most recent occasion of a lefty playing third base in a major league game was by the otherwise unremarkable Mario Valdez as a 22-year-old rookie with the White Sox in 1997. Valdez pinch-hit for third baseman Chris Snopek in the top of the eighth in a game at Pittsburgh on July 2, then played the bottom of the eighth at the hot corner without getting a fielding chance. Valdez actually played third base in five minor league games and handled seven chances without making an error.
But for the last lefty to field a ball at third base in the major leagues, we go back to a man who was mentioned at the top of this post: Don Mattingly, who actually started two games at third base during his remarkable 1986 season. The experiment began August 29, when Lou Piniella, in his first year as a manager, shifted Mattingly to third base in the fifth inning of a game at Seattle. Wayne Tolleson shifted from third base to short after shortstop Mike Fischlin had been lifted for a pinch-hitter. The Yankees were trailing 12-11 (in the fifth inning!) but came back to win 13-12. Mattingly handled six chances at third base without an error and even started a double play, using a glove borrowed from pitcher Dennis Rasmussen. The headline on the next day’s New York Times game story was “Mattingly Plays 3d in Victory.” (Oddly enough, the Times barely alluded to Mattingly being left-handed.) Mattingly had taken ground balls at third during batting practice because Piniella had already decided to use him at the position the next night. (Mike Pagliarulo, the Yanks’ regular third baseman, was out with a hamstring injury.)
In his game story in the Times, Michael Martinez said “some of [Mattingly's] teammates were not particularly enthused by the idea” of Mattingly manning third. “I thought it was a joke,” was Rickey Henderson’s reaction to the move. “Don’t tell me it’s reality. If it’s the middle of the season and we’re out of the race, I could see it. But we’re not out of the race.” (The win in Seattle moved the Yankees five games back of the Red Sox in the AL East.)
“I know everybody thinks I’m nuts,” Piniella said. “But I’ve got nobody else to play there.”
The next night the Yankees played a doubleheader at the Kingdome, with Mattingly starting the opener at third base as Bill Swift pitched a two-hitter and the Mariners won 1-0. Tolleson started at short, then moved to third in the sixth inning (with Mattingly moving to first) when Fischlin entered the game. Mattingly made an error in the bottom of the first on a high throw after fielding a grounder by leadoff man John Moses, but he atoned for the error by starting a double play on a grounder by the next batter, Mickey Brantley.
Mattingly played first base in the nightcap, with Tolleson at third and Fischlin at short, and his fourth-inning homer put the Yankees ahead in a game they would win 3-0. But the next day he played the full game at third in a 6-2 Yankee loss, with Tolleson at second base as Willie Randolph was unavailable due to a hamstring injury. Mattingly had four assists in an errorless performance.
The next day, September 1, the rosters expanded and minor league callup Leo Hernandez was at third base. Either Hernandez or Pagliarulo was in the lineup for every game the rest of the way.
ADDED 3/16/13: Other lefthanders who have played third base…Terry Franciona played four innings off the bench and had three assists without an error for the Expos in 1985…Charlie Grimm started a game at third base for the Cardinals in 1918…and the remarkable Mike Squires, a slick-fielding first baseman, played 14 games at third in 1983-84 (committing no errors in 38 innings) and started four, all in 1984. In one of those games he started at first base, moved to third and finished on the mound. Squires also made two brief appearances behind the plate in his career…but I’m leaving lefthanded catchers out of this post. There have been only two others who have actually caught in a major league game since 1916, Dale Long and Benny Distefano, neither of whom started a game there. Long actually got an assist as a catcher…on a dropped third strike. None of the three lefthanded catchers committed an error, although Long and Distefano each had a passed ball. For more about left-handed catchers, see this post from Jack Moore.
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