Stealing Home
Imagine my delight when I came across this headline on the front page of an old issue of The Boston Globe:
If nothing else, this is proof that “clickbait” is not something that was invented recently.
And the brief interview with Jackie Robinson that follows is even better:
George Moriarty is actually an interesting player. The BR Bullpen will tell you that he was only documented to have stolen home 11 times, but that rumor had it that he would steal home anytime he was on third base.
I’m not sure what the documentation is based on, and presume that there’s some article out there that I haven’t read yet. I was able to find a time when Moriarty was caught stealing home in 1908, though:
And then there was this example of him stealing home later in that season:
But, as usual, I need to do more research to figure stuff like this out.
Thanks to this excellent Bill Nowlin article, we do know how often Jackie Robinson stole home in his career. Jackie stole home 19 times in the regular season in his career, and was caught stealing home 12 times.
On August 28, 1955, Jackie was caught trying to steal home for the first time in over 14 months:
And it seems that Jackie felt that he could make it because of the momentum he had generated with some pretty aggressive baserunning:
Robinson, of course, was not one to be deterred. He went for it again on August 29:
What you won’t see if you only look at the boxscore is that Jackie was nursing sore legs at the time:

And then there was the minor issue of Billy Martin being thrown out in the same World Series game that Jackie was famously called safe:
So why did Jackie go for it with the odds against him? It’s simple. He figured the Yankees weren’t expecting it:
Perhaps there was the element of surprise. Perhaps Robinson saw the pitcher do something that we can’t see in the television broadcast or in the game film.
Or perhaps Robinson was actually out. We’ll never know.
Note that the original article is too long for me to reproduce here. If you want to read the full article, check out my Patreon page.












Robinson did steal home 19 times in the regular season but was caught stealing 12 times. Not as good as one might have thought.