Wild One at Ebbets

Braves at Dodgers, April 26, 1949

The Rain

I knew this was going to be a wild one when the weather report read like this:

As it turns out, though, I had no idea what I was getting into.

Downpour

When it rains, it pours.

And the Dodgers poured all over Warren Spahn in the beginning of this one.

I mean, they were merciless, scoring 6 runs and batting around in the first inning alone. It felt like the 2-6 Dodgers were taking out all of their offensive frustrations at once.

It was so ugly that I stopped worrying about screenshots — which, as it turns out, was a mistake.

And then the other downpour came:

You see, Diamond Mind Baseball is one of those sims where weather really does matter. If it rains for long enough, one or both starting pitchers might be forced out of the game. And that made for a real interesting affair.

Erskine

We brought in Carl Erskine, who specialized in this sort of situation in real life.

Erskine gave up a couple of runs quicky, but the Dodgers got them back. It was 8-2 Brooklyn going into the top of the 3rd, and I was wondering if this would wind up being a huge blowout.

However, Tommy Holmes came up with two men on, and, well…

And that was not all. The Braves added one more in the top of the 6th to make it a 8-6 game — and now it was time for me to pay attention again.

Going Too Far

I went too far with Erskine, in retrospect.

Please don’t pay too much attention to his line in the boxscore — you’ll embarrass me. He went 5 1/3 innings, giving up 8 runs in the end on 9 hits and a whopping 13 walks.

Yes, you read that correctly. The long relief man walked 13 batters in less than 6 innings. And I stayed with him.

He threw 155 pitches in all, almost 100 of which were balls. This was a legendary bad outing, one for the record books.

And Erskine started to really show his fatigue in the top of the 8th.

It all started off with a walk to Earl Torgeson, who promptly stole second base. And that brought up Jim Russell:

That was all I could stand from Erskine, who looked absolutely exhausted on the mound. I decided to go with rookie Bud Podbielan.

Bud got Holmes to fly out to right, sending Russell to third. Phil Masi then walked, and I started to get a bad feeling in my stomach.

Up came the Boston pitcher, Bobby Hogue:

In my defense, I do think that was the right call. We might have been able to get out of the inning with a double play, but I think the run at the plate was more important.

Fortunately for us, the computer manager was a little bit aggressive with Masi on second:

The Other Brown

Surely you remember my last Diamond Mind Baseball writeup, right? Bobby Brown was almost the goat in that one.

Well, here came another Brown from across town — Tommy Brown, with Roy Campanella on at third base and two men out:

That gave us a slim 9-8 margin with one inning to go. Could we hold on?

The Dreadful Ninth

Spoiler alert: no, we couldn’t hold on.

Alvin Dark let me know in a hurry that we needed a pitching change:

I brought in Paul Minner, a lefty, to try to get us out of the jam.

That brought up Eddie Stanky, and the computer manager made the right call here:

Now came an interesting choice. The computer manager decided to use Clint Conatser as a pinch hitter for Marv Rickert. I’m not sure how much I agree with the move, but it did seem to work:

And that brought up Torgeson:

Now the score was knotted at 9, and Russell came up with two men out. He’s always dangerous:

It was 10-9 Boston at this point. I’d seen enough from Minner, and went with Jack Banta instead.

Big mistake.

Up came Holmes:

And on went Holmes to first base.

Then up came catcher Phil Masi:

And on went Masi to first base.

That was enough of Banta. I went to the bullpen once again, this time for Pat McGlothin.

The pitcher Hogue was the next batter up. Hogue had pitched much better than any of the Dodger pitchers to this point, and I guess the computer thought he could handle the 9th.

And that ended the top of the 9th, the Dodgers now trailing 10-9.

Miracle

You can probably guess where this is going.

Carl Furillo promptly knocked Hogue out of the box with this leadoff base hit:

That brought in Bob Hall to pitch, still up by a run.

And, well, Hall had a few issues:

Now, there was simply no way I was going to risk running with Furillo in this situation, no matter how fast he may have been. Not with Gil Hodges up to bat, and not after the sort of offensive game we’d had to this point.

You’ve got to ask questions about the computer manager here. Why not just take Hogue out and go with Hall from the start? And why not just pitch instead of trying for the pickoff?

Gil didn’t give us much time to second guess, though.

And that ended a wet and wild afternoon in Brooklyn.

You’re reading this correctly. There were 28 hits and 20 walks in this game, along with 21 total runs. Boston left an amazing 17 runners on base in a single game. The boxscore looks like it belongs in 1930.