When Earle Combs Almost Died

July 24, 1934

When Earle Combs Almost Died

One thing that we take for granted in modern baseball is the presence of the warning track.

Old stadiums didn’t have that luxury. In fact, it wasn’t really until 1949 that Major League Baseball started requiring that stadiums provide outfielders with a warning that the fence was near.

Yankee Stadium was famously the first stadium to have such a track, though this was an actual running track, not a track created for anybody’s benefit.

And so, if you look closely at this old photo of Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis from the 1934 World Series, you’ll notice that there’s absolutely no warning track at all:

Earlier in that season, the lack of a warning track was a major problem.

The incident took place on July 24, 1934, when the Yankees were visiting the St. Louis Browns. New York was in a battle for first place with the Detroit Tigers. The Browns, meanwhile, were settling down comfortably in the second division, just as they usually did.

Only around 750 fans bothered to show up for this game, which was played on a blistering hot afternoon.

The incident took place in the second game of the doubleheader that day:

From New York Daily News, July 25, 1934, page 42

And, actually, the St. Louis newspapers seem to have had a better description of the story than the New York papers I’ve got access to:

From St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 25, 1934, page 6

And, actually, the Associated Press carried the story that most papers in the United States and Canada reproduced about the injury:

From The Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee), July 25, 1934, page 9

Combs tried to come back from his injury in 1935, but hurt his collarbone about halfway through the season, and that was it for him.

It was a rougher game back in those days than you might have thought.