The Last Out : Durocher Didn’t Stop Vander Meer, but He Didn’t Go Easily, Either

It wasn’t one of the highlights of Leo Durocher’s checkered career, yet it put him in a class by himself in baseball history.

Leo the Lip was the man who made the final out of the most significant no-hit game ever. He doubtless has forgotten dozens of things that happened in his 49 years in baseball, but not this. He was the last batter with a chance to foil Johnny Vander Meer’s bid for an unprecedented second straight no-hitter, and he came reasonably close to pulling it off.

On that night of June 15, 1938, the left-handed Vander Meer was a 23-year-old pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds, and Durocher was a 32-year-old shortstop with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Durocher, later to gain renown as one of baseball’s most successful and controversial managers, was all that stood between Vander Meer and a feat that hasn’t been equaled before or since.

Durocher had a lifetime batting average of .247. But he was tough in the clutch, and if there was ever a clutch situation, this was it. Not only was Vander Meer’s shot at undying fame on the line, he had made it tougher on himself by walking the bases full.

Durocher lined Vander Meer’s first pitch down the right-field line--foul. He ran the count to 2-and-2, then hit a fly to short center field. As center fielder Harry Craft, shortstop Billy Myers and second baseman Lonnie Frey chased the ball, it seemed for an instant as though all might be too late. But Craft gloved it for the final out, and 38,748 fans at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn went berserk over the visiting hero.

Looking back 50 years, Durocher said: “I almost got a base hit. I just took a swing at the ball. That was all you could do with that man. I hit a mediocre fly ball to center field, and it was dying real quick, but Craft caught up with it.

“It was what you would call a semi-line drive. It wasn’t that I hit the ball hard or anything. Let me say it was between hitting it good and hitting it bad. Craft caught it about 2 feet off the ground.”

Durocher maintained that the history Vander Meer was making hadn’t entered his mind as he strode to the plate. In three previous times at bat, he had grounded out, fouled out and grounded into a forceout.

“You never think about a no-hitter when you’re on the other side,” Durocher said. “You walk up there and take your turn at bat. It’s another at-bat, that’s all.”

Vander Meer had pitched his first no-hitter four days earlier against the Boston Bees, which is what the Braves were called from 1936 through 1939. Still, the size of the crowd, which was beyond Ebbets Field’s capacity, was mostly because the game was the first played in Brooklyn at night.

Larry MacPhail, the most aggressive and innovative executive of that era, had introduced night baseball to the major leagues in Cincinnati in 1935. The first night game in the minors had been played in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1930. Now MacPhail was the general manager in Brooklyn, so the Dodgers followed the Reds’ lead.

The lights used in those days, of course, didn’t compare in candlepower with those of today. Durocher stopped short of saying that Vander Meer had benefited from that, but he did mention the difference between night and day baseball.

“It’s always tougher to see at night,” Durocher said. “That’s true even today. The way the lights shine on the ball, you see only about half of it as it comes toward the plate.”

Although Vander Meer was one of the hardest throwers in baseball at that time, Durocher wasn’t overly impressed with his velocity.

“He was fast, all right, but many others have been a lot faster than he was,” Durocher said. “Sandy Koufax was faster, and Nolan Ryan still is. Today, a lot of pitchers bring it around 90-95 m.p.h. Vandy was about 90, sometimes 92. Once in a while, he might turn a couple loose at 94.

“Besides his fastball, he had a good curve and a good motion, with a high kick. The way he kicked his leg up, his delivery was so deceptive that you really had to concentrate to keep your eye on the ball.

“On top of that, he was so wild that you had to stay loose. You couldn’t afford to dig in on him.”