Baseball is a fun sport. Thatās its only goal. So I love discovering situations where it blew past that goal and became confusing nightmares. More like ātake me out OF the ball gameā, amirite? Ha ha ha. Ha ha! That phrase references āTake Me Out To The Ball Gameā, a song every baseball fan knows by heart. I know that song better than the other song they play at baseball games, even though āthe other songā is the U.S. national anthem. By the way, āTake Me Out To The Ball Gameā was written 114 years ago. Thatās weird. That is maybe too old. Much like baseball itself, āTake Me Out To The Ball Gameā is a national modern institution *and* a lingering Victorian ghost.
Speaking of hauntings: baseballās mascots can be haunted. Its children’s literature can be propaganda for a space alien. And its marketing stunts can beā¦the topic of this column. In 1915, at spring training, the Brooklyn Dodgers attempted one fun marketing stunt. Thatās all. One liāl goof, for the āgram (as in ātelegramā).
If that stunt went well, or fine, or badly, I wouldnāt write it up. But that stunt achieved bone-chilling singularity. It took so many wrong turns, and got so far out of hand, it made the Brooklyn Dodgersā manager think heād been murdered.
Thatās him. Due to a promotional stunt for the Brooklyn Dodgers, that manager thought he got murdered. Even though he came out of the stunt unharmed! No wounds. No broken bones. That fifty-something cherub-man lived another twenty years. He survives this story, even though this is a story from 1915. 1915 is peak Reckless Old-Timey Times. Stories from 1915 are supposed to end in needless death, as a basic courtesy to the reader. As a standard treat. A memento mori mint-on-pillow. However: this guy did *think* he got murdered. Which matters! I have to imagine that experienceā¦ sticks with you.
Do you like sports, Dear Reader? Well even if you have zero interest in sports, I think you should hear some baseball stories. Theyāre fun, because theyāre pretty universally weird. Whyās that? Baseball fans love stats. Probably too much. As a result, baseball players are the most over-observed men in world history. American baseball is a longterm nationwide chronicle of almost a thousand players (or more than a few thousand, if you include the minor leagues) spending 200+ days per year doing sports (i.e. goofing around). And because baseball people love baseball stats, a legion of geeks recorded *every event* of that history. Every game, every lineup, every other journalism they can journal. The resulting corpus of stats, statements, and screwinā-around is unique. Itās our most asinine annual record of how strange it is to play baseball ā and more fundamentally, how strange it is to be alive.
Baseball stories are a parade of impossibilities, verified by eyewitnesses and videotape. One time a pitcher obliterated a dove. An outfielderās throw bullseyed a seagull. A batter hit what shouldāve been an easy out, but the ball bonked off a pigeon for a double. I know thatās a lot of bird stuff. Bird stuff is my favorite tip of this iceberg. Baseball guys do clumsy, scabby, druggy, swappy stuff thatās so mind-boggling it sounds fake. Theyāve done it since the late 1800s. And I love knowing all of it. I donāt know what happens when an infinite number of monkeys use typewriters. I do know what happens when more than twenty thousand guys contest a childrenās game a quarter million times. They generate a Shakespeareās worth of masculine time-wasting. Itās very stupid, in the ways anything wall-to-wall male is stupid. Honestly thatās part of why this columnās story is worth telling. Itās both a top baseball story *and* the rare baseball story involving a woman.
This story happened in 1915, in Florida, and it centers on a grapefruit. I once made an episode of my good podcast about grapefruit. I wanted to learn grapefruitās whole deal. As it turns out, their whole deal is theyāre freaks. And relatively new freaks. Grapefruit exist today thanks to an orgy of citrus cross-pollination in the 1700s. In the 1820s, a French guy brought someāa them freaks from the Caribbean to Florida. Grapefruit thrived in Florida, as all freaks do. Florida became our top grapefruit-growing state. It also feels right, to me, that Florida is king of the only fruit with a purpose-built murder-spoon.
To top all this off, Florida is home to āThe Grapefruit Leagueā. The Grapefruit League is an annual baseball practice round. A bunch of pro teams send their guys there to play āspring trainingā games. Thatās right: these teams put their childish grown men in Florida, in March (SPRING BREAK WOOOO), to play even-lower-pressure childrensā games than usual.
Bonus story: baseballās other spring league is called āThe Cactus Leagueā, because itās held in Desert Florida. One time a Cactus League player got injured by a literal cactus. I love that story on its own. I also love it as ~foreshadowing~ for the Grapefruit League tale Iāll now tell.
On March 13th, 1915, Wilbert Robinson was the pretty-new manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mr. Robinson was well-liked. So well-liked, they re-named the team in his honor. On this day āThe Brooklyn Robinsā were in Florida, practicing baseball, and side-hustling for promotional juice. They wanted to do a fun marketing stunt! So they arranged a stunt where aviatrix Ruth Law ā a woman! ā would fly her plane into the air, and toss a baseball to Wilbert Robinson from the sky. Heād catch it. And thenā¦marketing! Because like every other atom of baseball, somebody would write it down. (Also the authorities needed more information, for apprehending that freewheeling gal.)
Wilbert was the obvious target for this marketing stunt. And I know, this āmarketing stuntā sounds more like an assassination attempt made entirely out of toys. Either way, Wilbert was the team manager. He was the teamās face and namesake. He was also a former star baseball player, who played the position literally named ācatcher.ā If anybody could catch(er) a ball, it was this Wilbert fella.
This planned baseball marketing stunt required a baseball. However, before the plane took off, āhere is a baseballā became āhey we found a grapefruit letās huck that at him instead.ā How this happened is up for debate. Some say Law forgot to bring a ball to the airfield. Some say her colleague thought a grapefruit would be funnier. In the end, nobody knows. This takeoff was not a baseball game. It lacked a note-taking Nerd Gallery. What we do have a record of is the nerd-thronged Dodgers/Robins ballfield. Thatās where Wilbert Robinson stood, glove skyward, ready to catch a sphere thrown from a miracle (an aeroplane!) by a miracle (an unaccompanied woman!?).
Here is ESPNās account of what happened next:
I doublechecked this. Another source (The Society For American Baseball Research) says the same. This guy got hit with a grapefruit instead of a baseball. It pulped his ass up. And for multiple entire seconds, he thought that copious reddish sploosh was his innards. He thought most of his blood was Old Faithful-ing onto an infield. He thought heād gushed a gallon or two, in an era when blood transfusions were new technology, and Floridaās chief infrastructure was “look at this swamp I found.” Imagine the doctors of 1915 Florida. Imagine that. When I try, I picture Wilford Brimley in Hard Target, but with a hospital blazing to the ground behind him. Anyway good Florida-imagining everybody. Now imagine 1915 Brooklyn. Are you imagining an electric trolley, scattering townsfolk in its murderous path? Good. That was the real situation there. It was the origin of the name āBrooklyn Dodgers.ā So when the Dodge-Robins planned this fun spring-swamp goof that gave their beloved patriarch a near-death experience, it probably stress-stacked atop his New York terminal brushes. Also hey, remind me, what was the last line of that ESPN story again?
Yeah! Thatās what happened. All hisā
ā¦yes, thanks Wilbert. Allā
Wilbert! No one cares! Or at least no one cared back then, probably. The modern concept of āPTSDā wasnāt codified ātil the 1960s. Our 1915 mental health care system was saloons. And this 1915 event shared newspaper space with World War Frigginā One. Those guys died. Wilbert Robinson did not die. Or at least, he did not DIE-die. But he did ādieā, for a few moments, in his own mind. That experience sticks with you! You donāt breeze past it! Iām amazed Robinson returned to New York City to manage ballgames. He shouldāve returned, put clown stuff on, and dumped stuff in the water supply. Which was a perfect crime, then. Water was colorful, then. Plus once Wilbert got on that clown makeup, how would anyone know heād Joker-fied? In 1915, *every* clown looked malevolent.
Anyway: Wilbert lived. He thrived. He managed his way into the Hall Of Fame. His Robins/Dodgers played that whole 1915 season. Also they played it at this stadium, near my current Brooklyn apartment. I found out I live close to that site by accident. I was trying to drop off our recycling, and I missed a turn, and I ended up seeing *the most* Jackie Robinson murals. What are the chances? Also in the 1950s, that Dodgers franchise moved out of Brooklyn, to a much more haunted stadium in Los Angeles. One of the few times Iāve been there, I saw a no-hitter in person. What are the chances? Why am I pursued by Dodgers-based improbabilities? How am I the main character of a whimsical, multiregional, not-even-my-favorite-team Final Destination?
But hey, maybe Iām overthinking it. Maybe thatās all random. Itās less likely than a baseball bird-death. Itās more probable than Ruth Lawās sky-ball turning out to be a grapefruit. But itās weird. And itās mine. And itās the type of oddity that keeps bringing me back to this sport slash historical phenomenon slash psychological experiment. So I will continue to take myself out to the ball gameā¦no matter how probably-haunted the music gets.
Alex Schmidt makes Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, which is a good podcast. LISTEN TO IT IMMEDIATELY.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jeff Orasky, who was once playfully murdered by the Portland Trailblazers to promote logging safety.