Marchildon's Quick Exit
Another Odd Moment
Marchildon's Quick Exit
I was doing research on Phil Marchildon’s 1949 season the other day when I noticed something strange.
Marchildon had been pretty injury prone through the 1948 season. A combination of war trauma (something that we tend to forget about these days) and arm trouble dogged him during the late 1940s. This is what his SABR biography has to say about that period:
Well, Phil tried to make a recovery in 1949, though it didn’t last long. His biographer has frustratingly little to say about 1949:
Why was I frustrated? Well, I felt frustrated by the lack of specifics because there is a clear gap in his performance. I mean, just look at his day-to-day record in 1949:
What in the world happened on April 26?
The Boxscore
This is one of those puzzles that Baseball Reference can’t solve for us. In fact, the play-by-play account is of absolutely no use.
Marchildon started the game in New York and did, well, nothing:
Seriously — from the looks of things, it’s almost like Marchildon sunk into the mound and disappeared from sight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pitching record quite like this one for a starter:
The play by play account is complete, by the way. And this is what it says:
So what happened? Did Connie Mack get upset with Phil and decide to bench him before he threw a pitch?
Newspaper Account
It’s times like these that make me happy to subscribe to newspapers.com.
Here is a brief writeup from The Philadelphia Inquirer on April 27, 1949:
I wasn’t able to find any news reports on the results of the x-rays. However, it is clear that the Athletics had a lot of injury woes in the pitching staff in 1949, as evidenced by this article on May 4:
If you start wondering why the Athletics seem to have no pitchers in your 1949 replay, well, now you know why.