The Never Ending Stories...

No. 2 — Another Tall Tale from Little Joe!

Joe Morgan’s autobiography is really good.

Yes, it was easy (and fun) to make sport of Morgan during his later years, as Ken Tremendous et al proved again and again. And again. But of course Morgan was an utterly tremendous player, and I actually thought he and Jon Miller made for a great team on ESPN for all those years (today, ESPN’s Sunday Night broadcasts are … fine).

One of my old books was essentially a compendium of what Bill James called “tracers” when I worked for him: You find an old baseball story, the more details the better, and then see whether the thing actually happened. In my book, I did work a few variations on the theme, but that’s essentially what it was.

And one of the stories in that book was taken from Morgan’s book.

Oddly, it was probably the wrong story. I mean, there are dozens of verifiable anecdotes in Morgan’s book, and the one I chose was a lot of fun. But just flipping through his book the other day, I found a better one.

It’s about the legendary and infamous Harry “The Hat” Walker, who managed the Astros for Morgan’s last (nearly) four seasons with the team.

Just a few words on Walker…

Walker, whose uncle, father, and brother (Dixie) all played in the majors, got a cup of coffee with the Cardinals in 1940 but didn’t get a real shot until 1943, when star outfielders Enos Slaughter and Terry Moore had gone into the army. Walker played well, granted by that point the competition was relatively weak.

Walker himself went into the service in 1944, and spent the first half of 1945 in western Europe, where he became a decorated war hero.

In 1946 he rejoined the Cardinals’ lineup but supposedly tried to hit for power, which killed his batting average. With Musial playing first base and Moore’s early decline, only Slaughter kept the outfield from being a complete mess. But the rest of the team was great and the Cardinals won the World Series.

In 1947 … well, here’s a sense of Morgan’s opinion of Harry Walker:

Harry had credentials. He played eleven years in the big leagues, won a batting title in 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke in. (Harry hit .363 that year, but was traded in midseason from the Cards to the Phils, which might suggest he had some problems—batting champions usually don’t get traded in midstream.)

Well, okay. Except it wasn’t midstream and nobody had any idea that Walker would become a batting champion. In ‘46 he’d batted just .237 after being away for two full seasons, and “well, looks like Harry’s washed up” would have been a defensible position. In ‘47, he was traded on May 3 with a .200 average in just 10 games.

And then with the Phillies, Walker became one of the great one-hit wonders, batting .371 in 130 games with the Phillies. His total for the season was .363, 46 points higher than National League runner-up Bob Elliott (and 20 points higher than Ted Williams, A.L. titlist).

Walker never did anything remotely like that again, although he did post a couple of killer seasons down in Triple-A before finishing his playing career with three seasons as player-manager of the Cardinals’ Texas League farm team.

Anyway, in 1968 Walker replaced Grady Hatton as Astros manager. Among his most talented players were Joe Morgan, Jimmy Wynn, and Don Wilson.

Here’s another sense of Morgan’s opinion of Walker: “… on our way to a last-place finish in 1968, Hatton was fired and in came Harry Walker, the ultimate disciplinarian and possibly the biggest fool I have ever known in the game.”

In his book, Morgan relates ugly incidents involving not only Walker and himself, but also Walker and Wynn, Walker and Don Wilson, Walker and Jesus Alou. And yes, that list does suggest a through-line.

Anyway, here’s the story at hand:

What happened was that we were locked in a tough, tough game against the New York Mets. Jimmy wasn’t playing this day but I was, and had gone 5 for 5. Tug McGraw was pitching for the Mets then and I had gotten my last hit off him two innings before. The game was tied at that point, we were in the 10th inning, and had a runner at second base with two out. I was in the on-deck circle, watching McGraw, thinking only about what I needed to do in that situation, when, suddenly, there was a walk and it was my turn to hit. I was called back to the bench. Harry and Jimmy were glaring at each other. I was being pinch-hit for, I was told, and Jimmy was refusing to go up and hit for me.

That’s a ton of detail! So let’s pause here.

Did Joe Morgan ever go 5 for 5 against the New York Mets?
He did not. Morgan never went 5 for 5 in his career, partly because he wasn’t a high-average hitter and partly because he drew so many walks.

Surprisingly (to me anyway), he posted only two five-hit games in his career, and only one of those as an Astro: in 1970, he went 5 for 6 in a 9-4 win in San Diego. Morgan played the whole game, as did Wynn.

He did have a 6-hit game, but that was way back in 1965 when Lum Harris managed the Astros (Morgan and Wynn both played the whole game, a 9-8, 12-inning loss to the Braves).

Is there another game that better matches these details?
There is! Quite well!

August 29, 1970.

In that game:

• Morgan went 4 for 4

• Wynn did pinch-hit for Morgan

• McGraw was pitching in the 10th, and

• the game was indeed tied.

Alas, the other details are off. The leadoff man (Doug Rader) had walked, then reached third on a wild pitch and a ground-out. Morgan had not earlier singled off McGraw, who entered the game to start the bottom of the 10th.The game was not tied; the Astros were losing 8-7.

So the Astros needed two runs to win, with a runner on third and one out. Oh, and they had Jimmy Wynn, one of the game’s top righty-hitting sluggers, on the bench.

Was pinch-hitting Wynn for Morgan a good percentage move, with the lefty McGraw on the mound. Maybe! As great as Morgan was, Wynn at that time was significantly better than Morgan against lefties.

Of course it was still an unorthodox move, not to mention provocative. Assuming you believe Morgan (and others) on the subject of Walker’s prejudices and tendencies.

Morgan certainly considered it provocative.

Morgan:

I believe Jimmy’s career was in jeopardy at that moment. He went up to hit, not because he sensed danger to himself but because a friend was imploring him. He could tell I needed him not to buckle under at that moment and he went up to the plate. Jimmy did not get a hit, we did not score, we eventually lost the ball game. It was all so shabby.

After I was removed, I went back to the clubhouse, passing Harry as I went. I knew if I ever challenged him about why he had done that he would come back at me with some bull about percentages but he knew it would never wash. I hit left-handers even better than I did right-handers. But if I questioned him, I would have given him what he really was looking for. Instead, as I passed him on my way out of the dugout, I said very calmly to him, “You know, you’re not trying to win.”

A couple of things about that passage. One, of course Morgan did not “hit left-handers even better” than right-handers. While Morgan’s batting and on-base averages were roughly the same against both, he did show significantly more power in his career against righties. Of course there is a long, LONG history of players claiming, and continuing to claim, that it never really mattered who was pitching. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The real kicker, though?

Wynn drew a walk, and moments later scored the winning run.

I don’t know if Harry Walker was trying to win. After all, it was late August and the Astros were 24 games out of first place.

He did win that one, though.

Postscript: Hey, Jimmy Wynn wrote a book too. With (I’m guessing) plenty of help from co-author Bill McCurdy, who pretty obviously studied Morgan’s book in great detail.

Wynn/McCurdy tell the story almost exactly as Morgan told it … except factually.

My memory of what happened next is aided by the fact that box scores are now readily available on the Internet in ways they weren’t around for everybody back in the early 1990s when Joe Morgan wrote his book.

Joe’s memory of the game is that we lost. We actually won, 8-7, but that doesn’t vindicate Harry Walker from what he was trying to do. I didn’t get a hit in that game, but, based on the box score, I must have either walked or been hit by a pitch because I later scored what probably was the winning run.

Well, yeah. I think Retrosheet’s actually had the play-by-play for quite a while (Wynn’s book was published in 2010). And the score wasn’t 8-7. It was 9-8.

More Wynn: “Everything Morgan wrote about Harry Walker … was true. Walker was both a racist and a stupid ‘people person’. When it came down to managing a big league baseball team of grown men, Harry Walker was either the meanest man in the world, or else the most clueless manager in baseball history.”

Harry Walker outlasted Morgan in Houston, but not Wynn and Wilson and Alou, all of whom somehow stuck it out. He was finally fired late in the 1972 season, despite a solid record, and went back to the Cardinals as a hitting instructor. In 1979, the native Mississippian began building, from the ground up, a new University of Alabama at Birmingham program. With great success, too.

Which is not to suggest that Joe Morgan and Jimmy Wynn were wrong about him.