Top 6 Most Shocking MLB Events of All-Time: The Games - #5 Midget At The Bat

It was 1951.  Bill Veeck, owner of the St. Louis Browns, was desperate.  His ballclub was lousy and nobody was coming to the games.  Looking to give fans a reason to see a game - and pay - Veeck thought up the idea of a birthday party.  1951 was the 50th anniversary of the American League, as well as the 50th anniversary of Falstaff Brewery, one of the team's sponsors.  Nobody could actually prove that it was also Falstaff's 50th anniversary, but as Veeck wrote in From Veeck - As In Wreck, his autobiography, "If we couldn't prove it fell on the day we chose, neither could anyone prove that it didn't."

For years, Veeck had had the idea of using a midget to promote his team (he owned 3 different MLB teams during his lifetime).  He called a booking agent who found Eddie Gaedel.  While at first "dubious," after some selling by Veeck, Gaedel agreed to appearing at the birthday game.  And Gaedel would more than appear.  He'd sign a contract and become a member of the team.  Better yet, he'd come to the plate and actually bat.

Gaedel knew virtually nothing about baseball besides "I know you're supposed to hit the white ball with the bat.  And then you run somewhere."  Veeck spent time teaching Gaedel how to stand in the box and how to crouch (making the already tiny strike zone tinier).  When Gaedel pretended to swing, Veeck got scared, telling Eddie all he had to do was crouch in the box, take four balls, and trot to first base.  And if Gaedel did swing?  He was met with this warning from Veeck.  "I'm going to be up on the roof with a high-powered rifle watching every move you make.  If you so much as look as if you're going to swing, I'm going to shoot you dead."

Eddie was paid $100 for the day.  Veeck took out a life insurance policy on him for $1,000,000 to protect the team in case of sudden death or "sudden growth."

The whole plan was a secret.  Even the Falstaff Brewery folks only knew they were part of a big surprise.  The contract Gaedel signed was mailed to league headquarters on a Saturday night, so by the time it was opened on Monday morning, the game would have already been played (in case of expected protest from the league). 

A crowd of more than 18,000 showed up for the game, the largest to see a Browns game in 4 years.  In between games of the doubleheader, Gaedel made his grand entrance by popping out of a birthday cake.  Then he went back into hiding until the bottom of the first, when it was announced number one-eighth was batting for Frank Saucier.  Home plate umpire Eddie Hurley questioned the stunt and Browns manager Zack Taylor showed the signed contract, a telegram to league headquarters (time stamped) proving proper procedures had been followed (just followed at the very last second, before plans could be thwarted), and a copy of the active roster, which included number 1/8, Eddie Gaedel.

Gaedel got into the batters box and the crowd was alive.  The Falstaff people were besides themselves with joy at the promotion they were sure to receive from all of this.  But Veeck was beside himself for another reason.  Gaedel wasn't crouching, like he had been taught.  "He was standing straight up, his little bat held high, his feet spraddled wide in a fair approximation of Joe DiMaggio's classic style.  I was thinking," wrote Veeck in his autobiography, "I should have brought that gun up here.  I'll kill him if he swings.  I'll kill him, I'l kill  him."

But by the third pitch, pitcher Bobby Cain was laughing so hard he could barely throw.  Balls three and four floated about three feet over Eddie Gaedel's head.

Eddie trotted to first base, his image captured by snapping cameras.  He stood on the bag until a pinch runner could take his place, and then he ran across the infield, waving to the crowd, toward the St. Louis dugout.  He was now one of the most famous footnotes in one of the most famous games in the history of baseball. 

And the Browns lost, 6 to 2.

To read the #4 Most Shocking Event, go HERE.

To read the #3 Most Shocking Event, go HERE.

To read the #2 Most Shocking Event, go HERE.

To read the #1 Most Shocking Event, go HERE.