Robert E. Hunter – Alan E. Hunter

Baseball, Politics, Pop Culture, Presidents, Sports

Foul Ball!

June 3, 2025 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original publish date May 15, 2025.

https://weeklyview.net/2025/05/15/foul-ball/

Last week, I ran a story about Cleveland Indians phenom Bob Feller’s pitched foul ball that hit and injured his mother during a game against the White Sox at old Comiskey Park in Chicago. That got me thinking about other foul ball stories and legends I’d heard about. Growing up, I spent a lot of time at old Bush Stadium on 16th Street in Indy. My dad, Robert Eugene Hunter, a 1954 Arsenal Tech grad, had worked there as a kid selling Cracker Jack/popcorn in the stands during the Victory Field years. He recalled with pleasure seeing Babe Ruth in person there and could name his favorites from those great Pittsburgh Pirates farm club teams from the late 1940s/early 1950s. I can’t tell you how many RCA Nights at Bush Stadium he took me to back in the 1970s during the team’s affiliation with the Cincinnati Reds Big Red Machine. During those outings, nothing was more exciting than chasing foul balls.

Not all foul balls are fun adventures, though; some are crazy, and others are just plain scary. Growing up, I loved reading about the exploits of those players who played before World War I. Back in those days, baseballs were considered team property and quite expensive. Fans were expected to return any ball hit into the stands (including homeruns), and balls hit out of the stadium were meticulously retrieved. In 1901, the National League rules committee, as a way of cutting costs, suggested fining batters for excessively fouling off pitches. Beginning in 1904, per a newly created league rule, teams posted employees in the stands whose sole job was to retrieve foul balls caught by the fans. Fans had a keen sense of humor, though, and they would often hide them from the “goons” or frustrate the hapless employees by throwing them from row to row. Sometimes, the games of keep-away in the stands were more fun to watch than the ones on the field. But those early WWI stories mostly involved the exploits of the players, not the fans. There were some characters in the league back then. Some of them are long forgotten and some made the Baseball Hall of Fame.

One of my favorite players from that hardball era was a square-jawed eccentric left-handed pitcher from the oil town of Bradford, Pa. named George Edward “Rube” Waddell (1876-1914). Rube played for 5 teams in 13 years. His lifetime 193-143 record, 2,316 strikeouts, and 2.16 ERA landed him in the Hall of Fame. And if there were a hall of fame for flakes in baseball, Rube would have been a first-ballot electee. If a plane flew above the field, Rube would stop in the middle of a game. If Rube heard the siren of a firetruck, he’d drop his glove and chase it. He once left in the middle of a game to go fishing. Opposing fans knew that Rube was easily distracted so they brought puppies to the game and held them up in the stands to throw him off. Rival teams brought puppies into the dugout for the same reason, knowing that Rube would drop his glove and run over to play with them every time. Shiny objects seemed to put Rube in a trance. His eccentric behavior led to constant battles with his managers and scuffles with bad-tempered teammates. Even though he was a standout pitcher, Rube’s foulball stories came off his bat, not out of his hand.

On August 11, 1903, the Philadelphia Athletics were visiting the Red Sox. In the seventh inning, Rube Waddell was at the plate. Waddell lifted a foul ball over the right field bleachers that landed on the roof of a Boston baked bean cannery next door. The ball rolled to a stop and became wedged in the factory’s steam whistle, which caused it to go off. It wasn’t quitting time yet, but the workers abandoned their posts, thinking it was an emergency. The employee exodus caused a giant caldron full of beans to boil over and explode. Suddenly, the ballpark was showered by scalding hot beans. Nine days before, on August 2, another foul ball off the bat of Waddell hit a spectator, supposedly igniting a box of matches in the fan’s pocket and ultimately setting the poor guy’s suit on fire and causing an uproar.

Waddell’s 1903 E107 Card.

Still, a foul ball hit by the aptly named George Burns of the Tigers in 1915 is worth mentioning in the same breath. His “scorching” foul liner struck an unlucky fan in the area of his chest pocket, where he was carrying a box of matches. The ball ignited the matches, and a soda vendor had to come to the rescue, dousing the flaming fan with bubbly to put out the fire.

**Richie Ashburn Philadelphia Phillies.**

Richie Ashburn figures in many of the best foul ball stories in baseball lore. A contact hitter, Ashburn had the ability to foul off many consecutive pitches till he found one he liked. On one occasion, he fouled off fourteen consecutive pitches against Corky Valentine of the Reds. Another time, he victimized Sal “The Barber” Maglie for “18 or 19″ fouls in one at-bat. ”After a while,” said Ashburn, “he just started laughing. That was the only time I ever saw Maglie laugh on a baseball field.” Ashburn’s bat control was such that one day he asked teammates to pinpoint a particularly offensive heckler seated five or six rows back. The next time up, Ashburn nailed the fan in the chest. On another occasion, Ashburn unintentionally injured a female fan who was the wife of a Philadelphia newspaper sports editor. Play stopped as she was given medical aid. Action resumed as the stretcher wheeled her down the main concourse, and, unbelievably, Ashburn’s next foul hit her again. Thankfully, she escaped with minor injuries.

Another notable foul ball hitter was Luke Appling, the Hall of Fame shortstop with a career batting average of .310. As the story goes, Appling once asked White Sox management for a couple of dozen baseballs, so he could autograph them and donate them to charity. Management balked, citing a cost of several dollars per baseball. Appling bought the balls from his team, then went out that day and fouled off a couple dozen balls, after which he tipped his hat toward the owner’s box. He never had to pay for charity balls again, the legend goes.

1934 Cardinals The Gashouse Gang:
Pepper Martin, Terry Moore & Ducky Medwick.

Another great foul ball story involves Pepper Martin and Joe Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals famous Gas House Gang teams of the mid-1930s. With Martin at bat, Medwick took off from first base, intending to take third on the hit-and-run. Martin fouled the ball into the stands, and Reds catcher Gilly Campbell reflexively reached back to home plate umpire Ziggy Sears for a new ball. Then, just for fun, Campbell launched the ball down to third, where Sears, forgetting that a foul had just been hit and that he had given Campbell a new ball, called Medwick out. The Cardinals were furious, but not wanting to admit his error, Sears refused to reverse his call, and Medwick was thrown out-on a foul ball!

The great Cal Ripken Jr. made life imitate art with a foul ball in 1998. In the movie The Natural, Roy Hobbs lofts a foul ball at sportswriter Max Mercy, as Mercy sits in the stands drawing a critical cartoon of the slumping Hobbs. Baltimore Sun columnist Ken Rosenthal faced a similar wrath of the baseball gods after he wrote a column in 1998 suggesting that it might be time for Ripken to voluntarily end his streak, at that point several hundred games beyond Lou Gehrig’s old record, for the good of the team. Ripken responded by hitting a foul ball into the press box, which smashed Rosenthal’s laptop computer, ending its career. When told of his foul ball’s trajectory, Ripken responded with one word: “Sweet.”

Another sweet story involves a father and son combination. In 1999, Bill Donovan was watching his son Todd play center field for the Idaho Falls Braves of the Pioneer League. Todd made a nice diving catch and threw the ball back into the second baseman, who returned it to the pitcher. On the next pitch, a foul ball sailed into the outstretched hands of the elder Donovan. “I was like a kid when I caught it,” said the proud papa. “It made me wonder when was the last time that a father and son caught the same ball on consecutive pitches.”

One day in 1921, New York Giants fan Reuben Berman had the good fortune to catch a foul ball, or so he thought. When the ushers arrived moments later to retrieve the ball, Reuben refused to give it up, instead tossing it several rows back to another group of fans. The angered usher removed Berman from his seat, took him to the Giants’ offices, and verbally chastised him before depositing him in the street outside the Polo Grounds. An angry and humiliated Berman sued the Giants for mental and physical distress and won, leading the Giants, and eventually other teams, to change their policy of demanding foul balls be returned. The decision has come to be known as “Reuben’s Rule.”

While Berman’s case was influential, the influence had not spread as far as Philadelphia by 1922, when 11-year-old fan Robert Cotter was nabbed by security guards after refusing to return a foul ball at a Phillies game. The guards turned him over to police, who put the little tyke in jail overnight. When he faced a judge the next day, young Cotter was granted his freedom, the judge ruling, “Such an act on the part of a boy is merely proof that he is following his most natural impulses. It is a thing I would do myself.” The tide eventually changed for good, and the practice of fans keeping foul balls became entrenched. World War II was another time when patriotic fans and owners worked together to funnel the fouls off to servicemen. A ball in the Hall of Fame’s collection is even stamped “From a Polo Grounds Baseball Fan,” one of the more than 80,000 pieces of baseball equipment donated to the war effort by baseball by June 1942.

**Marine Private First Class George Benson Jr.**

One of those baseballs may well have been involved in one of the strangest of all foul ball stories. In a military communique datelined “somewhere in the South Pacific,” the story is told of a foul ball hit by Marine Private First Class George Benson Jr., which eventually traveled 15 miles. Benson’s batting practice foul looped up about 40 feet in the air, where it smashed through the windshield of a landing plane. The ball hit the pilot in the face, fracturing his jaw and knocking him unconscious. A passenger, Marine Corporal Robert J. Holm, muttering a prayer, pulled back on the throttle and prevented the plane from crashing, though he had never flown before. The pilot recovered momentarily and brought the plane to a landing at the next airstrip, 15 miles away.

In 1996, at the age of 71, former President Jimmy Carter made a barehanded catch of a foul ball hit by San Diego’s Ken Caminiti, while attending a Braves game. “He showed good hands,” said Braves catcher Javy Lopez.

With foul balls by this time an undeniable right for fans at the ballpark, what are your actual chances of catching a foul ball at a game? Well, to start with, the average baseball is in play for six pitches these days, which makes it sound as though there will be many chances to catch a foul ball in each game. While comprehensive statistics are not available, various newspapers have sponsored studies which, uncannily, seem quite often to come down to 22 or 23 fouls into the stands per game.

That seems like a healthy number until you look at average major league attendance at games. In the year 2000, the average game was attended by 29,938 fans. With 23 fouls per game, that works out to a 1 in 1,302 chance of catching a foul ball. With numbers like that, no wonder it feels so special to catch a foul ball. Nevertheless, those who yearn to catch a foul ball can improve their chances. I have listed some tips to help you bring home that elusive foul ball. Good luck!

Baseball, Indianapolis, Weekly Column

The Day Babe Ruth Came To Indianapolis.

April 22, 2018November 11, 2026 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original publish date: August 24, 2015 Republished: April 22, 2018.

https://weeklyview.net/2026/09/03/the-day-babe-ruth-came-to-indianapolis-2

Babe Ruth - Older — **Babe Ruth in Indianapolis.**

All through the summer of 1946, the mighty Babe Ruth had a severe pain over his left eye that would not go away. At first he thought it was a sinus infection, then a toothache. Whatever it was, it wasn’t getting any better. It eventually caused so much pain that Ruth admitted himself to a New York hospital on November 26. By then the entire left side of his face was swollen, his left eye closed shut, and he couldn’t eat solid food. Doctors removed three bad teeth, then pumped the Bambino full of penicillin and other drugs. By Christmas, Ruth was still in pain and back in the hospital.

Babe Ruth had cancer but the doctors never told him. They had discovered a malignant growth wrapped like a vine around a major artery in the left side of his neck. In the operation that followed, nerves were cut and the artery tied off. Not all of the cancer could be removed. Babe’s wife Claire said she was eventually told, but Babe remained in the dark until the very end. The surgery was on January 5, 1947. In the month that followed, Babe remained confined to the hospital in a state of near constant pain and depression. His hair began to fall out and he lost a lot of weight (estimated at between 80 to 128 pounds). It seemed that the Babe was just waiting to die.

Thousands of telegrams poured in every week from former teammates , sports luminaries (Connie Mack and Jack Dempsey among them), and average everyday fans. Claire read as many of letters as she could out loud to the Babe. On February 6 he celebrated his 52nd birthday in the hospital with Claire, Julia, and their dog, Pal. On February 15, Ruth left the hospital and wept unashamedly as he saw the throngs of admirers gathered outside as he was led to a waiting car. His natty camel’s hair overcoat and matching cap couldn’t hide the fact that Babe Ruth was a shadow of his former self.
Although weak and sickly, Ruth instinctively knew that he was back in the public eye. Extremely conscious of his debt to the “kids of America,” to whose loyal support he attributed his success, Ruth decided to apply himself to child welfare programs after his discharge from the hospital. He was engaged by the Ford Motor Company as a consultant in connection with its participation in the American Legion junior baseball program. In May, 1947, he established and made the first contribution to the Babe Ruth Foundation. Inc., an organization whose name soon became synonymous with youth baseball.

**Babe Ruth opening letters & telegrams.**

Babe Ruth - — **Claire and Babe Ruth in an Indianapolis Taxi Cab.**

The ravages of his illness left little of Ruth’s once robust physique. The Babe now appeared gaunt, bent and vulnerable. His once resonant voice reduced to only a rasping whisper. The Mighty Ruth continued to astound his physicians by tackling his new job with all his old-time vigor. “They call me a consultant,” said Ruth, “but I want to tell you that I plan to work hard at this job-just as hard as my health permits. The possibilities are unlimited and I won’t be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of 6 and 16 wearing a glove and swinging a bat.” He logged more then 50,000 miles in support of the program, appearing on diamonds all over the USA in front of thousands of youths.

Treatment with an experimental drug beginning in late June improved Ruth’s health tremendously. Throughout that summer of 1947 Ruth became the official ambassador of the American Legion baseball program. One of his stops while on the “American Legion Goodwill Tour” that summer was at the original Victory Field home of the Indianapolis Indians on 16th Street. Ruth appeared at the August 5, 1947 American Legion Junior All-Star game. The Sultan of Swat appeared on the field, shook hands with players and coaches and posed with local youngsters. He signed autographs for the fans and each All-Star player received an autographed baseball from Ruth. Two of the players in that game were future big leaguers Don Zimmer and Jim Frey representing the Robert E. Bentley Post # 50 out of Cincinnati.

The Indianapolis news reported: “Ruth thrilled the crowd when he was introduced during the intermission between the Legion game and the Indianapolis Indians’ game with Milwaukee. Ruth sat through the Legion game and several innings of the Indians game, but his ill health began to take its toll and he had to leave. Earlier in the day, he conducted an hour-long press conference, a pair of radio broadcasts and attended a luncheon in his honor. Once a hefty 278 pounds, Ruth’s weight had dropped to 193. He was coming off an illness that almost cost him his life and had just undergone a blood transfusion three days prior.”

**Babe Ruth in Indianapolis with fans. Note the Manual High School Redskins t-shirt on the boy at Ruth’s left side.**

The news spoke to one of the kids after the game about meeting the Babe, “His voice was deep and raspy, he coughed quite a bit, but it was the thrill of a lifetime.” said the unnamed player. The young athlete was surprised to see the once robust Ruth in such failing health, but impressed that he would spend time with them. Babe Ruth breezed through Indianapolis like an aging movie star unveiling their star on the Hollywood walk-of-fame. He was gone as fast as he came. It would be nearly 40 years after Ruth’s visit before my dad, Robert E. Hunter Arsenal Tech class of 1954, sat beside me at old Victory Field and dreamily stated, “You know I was here when Babe Ruth came through in 1947. I was selling peanuts here in the grandstands.” Strangely, he could rattle off the names of all those Pittsburgh Pirates minor league players on that team but couldn’t recall much about the Babe’s visit that day.
Ford renewed Ruth’s contract in early 1948, “not only because he was an inspiration to every American boy but because of the excellent results of his efforts last season.” The ex-slugger’s salary was not revealed but Ford announced that it “ranks him high on the list of baseball’s top money-earners.” As long as his strength permitted, Ruth continued to make appearances on behalf of the Junior Baseball program. It was to be only a momentary reprieve. At his last appearance in June 1948, before 16,000 youngsters in St. Louis, he was too weak to wave a bat for photographers.

**Babe Ruth in Indianapolis chatting with young fans.**

The remaining piece of the tumor was growing, and soon morphine was the only thing that could stop the discomfort. Babe still tried to live his normal life of golf outings and devouring steaks, but now the drives fell far short off the tee and the meat had to be served chopped up for him. Soon even biting down on the white of an egg caused excruciating pain for the once mighty “Sultan of Swat.” Despite the pain, Babe wrote in the closing of his autobiography “The Babe Ruth Story” that hopeful summer of 1947: “I’ve got to stick around a long, long time. For above everything else, I want to be a part of and help the development of the greatest game God ever saw fit to let men invent-Baseball.”

**Babe Ruth as Santa Claus with Polio afflicted children December 1947.**

Ruth bravely attended the Dodgers-Yankees World Series that fall and in December dressed up as Santa Claus to entertain young polio victims. Babe may not have known or wanted to believe it, but his own time was growing short. On July 26, the Ruth’s went to the New York City premiere of “The Babe Ruth Story”, but as his daughter Julia Ruth Stevens recalled, “he was so sick and so medicated that I’m not even sure he knew where he was.”

**George Herman “Babe” Ruth w/ Walter T. Rowcraft, Lincoln-Mercury District Manager, presents to Babe Ruth, the keys for his new 1948 Ford Lincoln car. The last car the Babe would ever own.**

Babe and Claire left shortly after the picture started and checked into Memorial Hospital for the last time. Babe Ruth struggled to answer letters and meet with visitors right up until August 15, 1948, barely a year after he graced the diamond of Victory Field in Indianapolis. Babe Ruth died in his sleep at 8:01 p.m. on the evening of on Aug. 16,1948. His last conscious act was to autograph a copy of his autobiography for one of his nurses. It was only after the great man’s death that the newspapers announced the cause of death as “throat cancer”.

A long line of mourners encircled Yankee Stadium to pay their respects as Ruth’s body lay in state. During the next two-days, more than 100,000 passed his open casket inside the ballpark. They were men, women, and children of all races and ages; from uniformed Little Leaguers to old men in derby hats. The crowd of worshipful mourners rivaled only the display of grief for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. Vendors sold hot dogs and photographs of the Babe to those waiting their turn in line. As crass as that might sound, the Babe would have loved it.