In Rob Neyer’s terrifically fun Big Book of Baseball Legends, he includes a handful of stories that he didn’t check. One of these is on page 91:
During the middle ‘30s, before he became chief umpire of the National League, [Bill] Klem was working home plate in St. Louis in a game between the Cardinals and the New York Giants. A fiercely magisterial man, he had lately returned to his position after haranguing the Cardinal bench in general and manager Frank Frisch in particular. Johnny Mize was at bat for the Cardinals and Hal Schumacher was pitching for the Giants. Klem suddenly discovered, like a burlesque comic doing a long take, that he had an afterthought for Frisch and left the plate to deliver it without bothering to call time.
Unable to check his windup, Schumacher pitched weakly to Mize, who hit a double. The Giants, led by Bill Terry, advanced noisily on Klem for redress, on the ground that since there had been no umpire around there had been no play.
Klem permitted the double to stand.
“Suppose, Bill,” Terry said finally, “suppose the ball had gone through Mize? How would you have called it?”
“Why,” replied Klem, “I would have called it what it was. Play ball!”
[From Gilbert Millstein, “Why They Argue With the Ump,” New York Times, July 29, 1956.]
This seemed to me to be a perfectly traceable story, so I decided I’d take a crack at it myself.
For starters, the date. Bill Klem’s last year as an umpire was 1941, so this event must have taken place by then. Hal Schumacher came up in 1931 and pitched for the Giants until 1942 (with a brief return in ’46). Bill Terry managed the Giants from 1932 to 1941, so we’re looking at a ten-year stretch. Frankie Frisch allows us to narrow the search even further: he managed the Cardinals from 1933 to 1938. And Johnny Mize didn’t come up until 1936. If we assume the main characters are correct, this must have happened in 1936, 1937, or 1938.
Now, we take a shortcut. Using the New York Times online archive, I searched for “Schumacher” and “Klem” in the years in question. And lo and behold, I found it: this event happened on July 19, 1938.
The story above misses on some details, but in substance it’s true. It was indeed a Giants-Cardinals game in St. Louis, and Hal Schumacher was pitching. In the fourth inning, the Giants led 3-2, but the Cardinals had men on first and second. Jimmy Brown (not Johnny Mize) was batting. The Times game story relates, “Umpire Klem, officiating behind the plate, suddenly turned away and walked off to address some pointed remarks in the direction of the Cardinal dugout. But Schumacher, noticing this too late, went through with his delivery anyway, only to see his pitch hammered to right for a single by Brown to drive in another run.”
The Giants protested, of course, but Klem said that the hit was legal. This was in spite of the fact that he’d had his back to the play. “Making no impression upon Klem,” reports the Times, the Giants “turned upon Ziggy Sears, the first base umpire, who, by reason of listening to a lengthy discourse, seemed to indicate he agreed with them. But Klem refused to be budged…”
Schumacher was totally rattled. He gave up four more runs in the inning, and he was removed in the fifth. The amazing thing is, the Giants went on to win the game. The hero was Hank Leiber, who had one of the greatest games of his life. He hit a two-run double in the third, and then in the eighth he slammed a solo home run. He came up again in the top of the ninth: two outs, bases loaded, the Giants trailing 6-5. Leiber hit a two-run single to put the Giants ahead, and Carl Hubbell (pitching in relief) closed out the victory.
To sum up: Jimmy Brown, not Johnny Mize, got the disputed hit for the Cardinals. And it was a single, not a double. And the game took place in 1938, which I don’t think really qualifies as “middle ‘30s.” But other than that, Gilbert Millstein’s story is pretty spot-on. I can’t say for sure whether the exchange between Klem and Bill Terry was exactly as Millstein reported it, but it sure sounds plausible to me. Mark this one down as confirmed.