By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2018/02/25/jack-hamilton-rip-the-headhunter-who-wasnt/“One of the dumb things I do sometimes,†Jim Bouton wrote in
Ball Four, his groundbreaking journal of his 1969 season, “is form judgments
about people I don’t really know. Case in point: Jack Hamilton, pitcher, Cleveland Indians.â€
He was with the Angel organisation last year and played with me in Seattle [minor leagues], which is
where I got to know him. Before that I played against him in the minors and considered him stupid,
a hard-throwing guy who didn’t care whether or not he hit the batter. In the majors I figured him for
a troublemaker because he used to get into fights with Phil Linz. Nobody fights with Phil Linz.
Then, when Hamilton hit Tony Congiliaro in the eye a couple of years ago and put him out for the season,
I thought, boy, this guy is some kind of super rat. But when I played with him in Seattle I found out he
was just a guy like everybody else, honestly sorry he’d hit Conigliaro, a good team player, a friendly
fellow who liked to come out early to the park and pitch batting practise to his kids. All of which made
me feel like an ass.
The tragic pitch—thrown as Congiliaro was helping the 1967 Red Sox toward a miracle pennant—ruined Conigliaro’s promising career and may,
may, have contributed long-term to his premature death. He suffered a combined heart attack and stroke in 1982, seven years after he made
one futile try at one more major league comeback. Leaving him mostly an invalid for the eight years until he died at 45 in 1990.
Now Jack Hamilton is gone, too, dying at 79 last Thursday at his Branson, Missouri home. Jim Bouton was far from the only one in baseball who
thought Hamilton “was some kind of super rat†(and that may have been one of the more polite epithets thrown Hamilton’s way) over the Conigliaro
coning. But how many ultimately joined Bouton in realising Hamilton—an Angels starter/reliever at the time—wasn’t even close to the headhunting
type?
“I couldn’t take a baseball and throw it at somebody’s head on purpose,†Hamilton, normally reticent about the public eye since his modest pitching
career ended after the 1969 season, told a reporter on the fortieth anniversary of the fateful pitch. “I don’t have the guts. I really don’t care what
the public thinks about me. Accidents happen. If I thought about it all the time, it would bother me. I know in my heart, I didn’t mean to throw it.â€
Before the pitch, the game was delayed when a fan threw a smoke bomb that landed near Angels left fielder Rick Reichardt. Conigliaro later wondered
whether the delay stiffened Hamilton’s arm, as well as remembering the pitch sailing in on him no matter that he jerked his head away from where
he thought it would reach.
Hamilton barely moved off the mound after Conigliaro went down because he had no idea just how seriously the Red Sox outfielder was injured. But
when he attempted to visit Tony C. in the hospital, he was blocked. “They were only letting family in,†Hamilton remembered many years later. “I never
had a chance to see him or say anything to him after that.â€
This may still shock those in Red Sox Nation who can actually stand to see Hamilton’s name without breathing fire and succumbing to the temptation
to try hunting him down, but the numbers actually bear him out. They’ll tell you Hamilton wasn’t anywhere close to the worst headhunter in baseball
history. A man who hits only
thirteen batters in eight major league seasons—equal to (count ‘em!)
three per 162 games lifetime—is not a man who
ought to be on anyone’s enemies list. No matter how deeply a fan base loves the man he felled.
Thirteen in eight seasons? Mike Fiers and Charlie Morton of the world champion Astros hit thirteen each last
year. So did Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in
1963. Hamilton isn’t even tied for 972nd place on the all-time hit list. But because Hamilton decked a Boston matinee idol, the obvious competitor to
Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski as the Red Sox’s team leader and star, Hamilton wore the scarlet P (for plunk).
There have been pitchers who should have struck far worse fear into the hearts of hitters and fans alike than Jack Hamilton—who became an Angel
early in the 1967 season, after putting up a decent season with the 1966 Mets (thirteen saves, a hard-luck 6-13 record as a starter/reliever, and the
second one-hitter in Mets history, plus hitting his only major league homer in his next start, and a grand slam in the bargain)—ever could. And,
there have been men who did strike such fear but may not actually have been as dangerous as their reputations.
It only begins with Carl Mays. He’s the man whose submarine spitter coned and killed Ray Chapman in 1920, inspiring a few rules changes such as
clean balls in play at all times and the outlawing of the spitter. Not to mention one harrowing book, Mike Sowell’s
The Pitch that Killed. Well, now.
In fifteen major league seasons, Mays averaged six hit batsmen per 162 games and totaled 89 for his career.
Early Wynn was once famous for having said, reputedly, that he’d knock his own grandmother down if she dug in against him. Grandma would have
been safer digging in against her grandson than crossing the street in midtown Chicago: Wynn averaged three hit batsmen per 162 games,
exactly what Hamilton averaged. In a 24-season career, he hit 64. Go ahead, sonny, make Grandma’s day.
Don Drysdale was a case of the inside-pitching pupil out-shining his teacher. And wait until you remember that teacher’s name: Sal Maglie, with
whom Drysdale spent one season as a Dodgers teammate. Sal the Barber (he didn’t get his nickname because he was a dark Italian who looked
like the guy giving you your monthly haircut) averaged half the hit batsmen per 162 games (five) that Drysdale averaged (ten). Maglie also retired
with 44 drilled in ten major league seasons.
Gibson took no quarter from any batter and has the stats to prove it, even if Drysdale he ain’t in the marksmanship department. He retired with
102 drills lifetime, averaging six per 162. His next-best trophy seasons beyond 1963 are eleven in 1965 and ten each in 1962 and 1969.
And Hoot, the Barber, the Submariner, and Grandma’s Little Headhunter weren’t even close to the worst of the lot. Only Drysdale among those
mentioned thus far turns up in the top twenty of all time. Here come the top twenty, with their lifetime plunks (their averages per 162 games are
in parentheses), and if you line up the lengths of their careers you may see some who weren’t quite as deadly as their numbers suggest and some
who were deadlier. I’ll even guarantee a name or two whom you might have seen in the top ten all time but didn’t quite get there, not to mention
a couple who might give you heart failure and a stroke at once when you see them on the list at all . . at first:
1. Gus Weyhing: 277 (18)
2. Chick Fraser: 219 (18)
3. Pink Hawley: 210 (19)
4. Walter Johnson: 205 (9)
5. Randy Johnson: 190 (11)
6. Eddie Plunk—er, Plank: 196 (11)
7. Tim Wakefield: 186 (12)
8. Tony Mullane: 195 (12)
9. Iron Man Joe McGinnity: 179 (14)
10. Charlie Hough: 174 (9); Clark Griffith: 174 (14)
11. Cy Young: 161 (6)
12. Jim Bunning: 160 (10)
13. Roger Clemens: 159 (8)
14. Nolan Ryan: 158 (7)
15. Vic Willis: 156 (11)
16. Bert Blyleven: 155 (7); Jamey Wright: 155 (11)
17. Don Drysdale: 154 (10)
18. Bert Cunningham: 148 (15); Adonis Terry: 148 (12)
19. Silver King: 146 (13); Jamie Moyer: 146 (7)
20. Win Mercer: 144 (15)
Read the foregoing very carefully. Then tell me how a man who pitched eight major league seasons and hit only thirteen in his career becomes
the most evil human being who ever stepped onto a major league mound, while a man nearly forgotten but who hit 144 men in nine major league
seasons averaging fifteen victims per 162 games gets a comparative pass.
I submit further that, based on the foregoing numbers, two knuckleball pitchers who averaged nine and eleven drills per 162 seasons could be
considered a little more dangerous than the hapless fellow who coned Tony C. Never mind, for now, that the knuckleball by its very nature might
tend to sail in a bit and kiss a hitter softly, depending on the day’s atmospheric conditions.
Just in case your curiosity still has the better of you, Bob Gibson doesn’t even place in the top fifty. He’s tied at this writing for 82nd place—with
Chief Bender, Tom Hughes, and Carlos Zambrano. Carl Mays, that murderer, has been pushed to number 122 on the hit parade—tied with the
aforesaid Charlie Morton with 89. (Morton has drilled sixteen per 162. Makes you wonder how some Dodgers lived to tell about their heartbreak
of a World Series loss.) Neither the Demon Barber of Coogan’s Bluff nor Grandma’s Little Headhunter cracked the top 150, either.
But for throwing one that ran in on a plate-crowding matinee idol (even his most loyal fans remember Tony C. crowding the plate at every opportunity)
and caught him on the cranium in the heat of a pennant race, Hamilton was considered Carl Mays’s successor as a baseball murderer. It’s long
past time to put that one to rest, says the evidence.
What happened to Tony Conigliaro—whose beaning inspired baseball to mandate ear flaps on batting helmets (he’d been hit below his helmet, on the
cheek), and whose name now graces the award given each year to a player who makes the most impressive return from adversity (as Conigliaro himself
did, for a short time)—was a sickening tragedy and an unintended, accidental one at that.
It does Conigliaro’s memory and Red Sox Nation no favour to suggest or believe otherwise. No matter how much they want to believe Jack Hamilton
was everything except that friendly fellow who was honestly sorry he’d hit Tony C. The future Branson restauranteur who liked to get to the ballpark
early and pitch batting practise to his kids.
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