Veeck’s Biggest Stunt : Eddie Gaedel, All 3-feet-7 of Him, Was a Major Leaguer 40 Years Ago Today

Forty years ago today, Eddie Gaedel broke into the big leagues.

And if he were alive, a boisterous, fun-loving man named Bill Veeck would still be laughing today at the sight--a 3-foot-7 midget, in a trim-fitting St. Louis Browns uniform with “ 1/8” on the back, striding resolutely, 17-inch bat in hand, to home plate.

It remains baseball’s Hall of Fame practical joke, and just may be the sport’s single funniest moment. And it had to be Veeck who pulled it off. Veeck owned the Browns at the time, and like everyone else who had anything to do with the Browns, he needed a laugh.

Years later, in retelling the tale countless times, Veeck told friends he had long wanted to suit up a midget and send him up to bat in a major league game. In 1951, he did it. That year, the Browns were awful--on their way to finishing 46 games out of first place.

Yes, 1951 was perfect.

Secretly that season, Veeck hired a Chicago theatrical agent and told him to find “the handsomest, best-looking, best-dressed midget in America.”

Several tiny men were brought to St. Louis for interviews with Veeck, but all were rejected for being, in Veeck’s eyes, too tall, not handsome enough or not being color-coordinated.

Then one day, Eddie Gaedel stepped into his office . . . and into baseball history.

Edward Carl Gaedel was 43 inches tall, dressed like a fashion model and evoked a feisty, bold air. He lived with his mother, Helene Gaedel, in Chicago, where he was a specialist welder at an aircraft assembly plant. He was assigned to crawl into tight places where normal-size people couldn’t go.

Veeck explained his plan. For $100, he wanted Gaedel to suit up in a Brown uniform, go up to bat in a game to be named later, draw a walk and come out of the game for a pinch-runner. It was to be a secret--Gaedel was to tell no one.

Veeck selected Sunday afternoon, Aug. 19, 1951. He didn’t want to risk having his practical joke affect the major league standings. His Browns, he figured, were going nowhere. Nor were the Detroit Tigers, 19 games out of first place.

Between games of a doubleheader that day, the Browns were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American League, and Veeck had a role for Gaedel for that, too.

Arriving in St. Louis the night before the doubleheader, the little rookie, 26, met with Veeck. Everything was spelled out.

“I was a marksman in the Marine Corps in the war, Eddie,” Veeck said. “I’m going to be up in the press Box with a high-powered rifle. If you even look like you’re going to swing at a pitch, so help me God I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.”

Next, Brown Manager Zack Taylor coached Gaedel into making the smallest strike zone in baseball history. He instructed Gaedel to spread his legs far apart, like Joe DiMaggio, and to bend over, into a crouch. The result was a strike zone about the height of a flashlight battery.

Gaedel was issued a uniform, loaned by Bill DeWitt, Jr., whose father had sold the team to Veeck. The elder DeWitt had had a uniform made for his son when he was 9 years old. Veeck had the “6” (the number of Bobby Dillinger, young DeWitt’s favorite player) taken off and replaced with “ 1/8”.

Gaedel was also issued a 17-inch, 23-ounce bat . . . but warned repeatedly not to swing it.

On the day Gaedel became a big leaguer, the paid crowd at Sportsman’s Park was 18,369. It was the Browns’ biggest turnout in four years.

After the first game of the doubleheader, Veeck’s 50th birthday party for the American League began. Max Patkin did his clown routine, a four-piece band of Brown player/musicians (including Satchel Paige) performed, and there were hand-balancers, trampoline acts, a juggler, aerial bombs and a parade of old cars around the field.

Then a 7-foot, papier-mache birthday cake was wheeled into the infield . . . and out popped Eddie Gaedel, in uniform, waving to the crowd as he trotted off the field.

The crowd cheered. But of course it hadn’t seen anything yet, because Gaedel was on his way to the bat rack.

In the Browns’ clubhouse, meanwhile, Veeck’s very nervous public relations man, Bob Fishel, was pacing. He was one of a handful of people who knew what was about to happen.

“Other than Don Larsen’s perfect game (in the 1956 World Series, when Fishel worked for the New York Yankees), it was the most nervous I’ve ever been at a ballpark,” Fishel told Newsday writer Joe Gergen in 1988, the year Fishel died.

And there was plenty to be nervous about. What would happen if Gaedel became excited and started swinging at pitches? And what about Bob Cain, the Tiger pitcher--what if he became angry and hit Gaedel with a fastball? What if the umpire, Ed Hurley, refused to let Gaedel bat?

So, a half-dozen men were sweaty-palmed when the Browns batted in their half of the first inning of the second game.

Public address announcer Bernie Ebert: “Your attention, please. . . . For the Browns, batting for Frank Saucier, Number one-eighth, Eddie . . . Gaedel.”

Not even the St. Louis players had known what was up, and heads on the Browns’ bench snapped right and left when Saucier was called back to the dugout by Taylor. Suddenly, through the dugout hallway, Gaedel appeared, with his tiny bat.

“What the . . . ,” several players muttered.

When Gaedel reached the top step of the dugout and headed toward home plate, there was, for an instant, stunned silence in Sportsman’s Park.

On that day, Jay Edson was Fishel’s $65-a-week publicity assistant. Recently, he said his most vivid memory of that day came next: “For just a second or so, there was dead silence. Everyone was kind of stunned. But the one sound you could hear was Veeck, laughing in the press box. He had the kind of laugh you could hear a block away, and when Eddie walked onto the field with that little bat, you could hear Veeck from anywhere in the ball park.”

As expected, plate umpire Hurley was immediately angered by the approach of Gaedel.

“He said something like, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ ” recalled Jim Delsing, who was to become Gaedel’s pinch-runner.

“Taylor knew there’d be a problem with Hurley, so he came out of the dugout as soon as Hurley started talking to Gaedel. He pulled Gaedel’s official American League contract out of his pocket. Hurley started to read it.

“By now, the Detroit manager, Red Rolfe, is out there with Hurley, wanting to know what’s going on. And the Detroit pitcher, Bob Cain, and his catcher, Bob Swift, are talking, too.”

Then, according to baseball historian Gerald Eskenazi, Hurley handed the contract back to Taylor, looked at Cain and Rolfe and said: “Play ball.”

Swift sat on the ground behind the plate, but Hurley ordered him into a conventional catcher’s crouch, then allowed him to go to both knees.

Cain didn’t come close to throwing a strike. The crowd howled as the tiny Brown trotted down to first base. Veeck, of course, laughed loudest of all.

Then Taylor sent in Delsing to run for Gaedel, and he left first base--and the major leagues--with a flourish. He smacked Delsing on the rump. The crowd howled again, then stood and cheered as he came off the field.

Afterward, St. Louis sportswriter Bob Broeg and others visited with Gaedel in the press box. Broeg said he was the only reporter who knew in advance that Gaedel was going to pinch-hit. Recently, Broeg, now retired, recalled lifting Gaedel up and sitting him on the edge of a table for an interview.

“The thing I remember about him so vividly after all these years is how beautifully dressed the guy was,” Broeg said. “He had on a perfectly tailored brown suit and a yellow shirt, open at the collar.

“Anyhow, I said to him: ‘Do you realize that you are now what every one of us (sportswriters) wishes we were . . . an ex-big leaguer?’

“Well, I guess that hadn’t hit him yet. He kind of straightened up and puffed out his chest. Then, without saying a word, he hopped off the table, walked out and left town. I never saw him again.”

Gaedel’s short big league career wasn’t so funny in the office of American League President Will Harridge. He reprimanded Veeck, who then fired off a letter to Harridge suggesting that if little people were to be barred from baseball, then he wanted the Yankees’ shortstop, 5-foot-6 Phil Rizzuto, suspended.

Harridge tried unsuccessfully to make Eddie Gaedel disappear, to make him a non-person. He ordered statisticians to exclude his name in 1951 statistics, and Gaedel did not appear in the 1952 Baseball Guide. However, Delsing was shown as a pinch-runner, and the walk was charged to Cain.

Today, Eddie Gaedel’s memory lives. The years roll by, but he’s still taking up his half-inch of space in the Baseball Encyclopedia. He’s shown as a right-handed batter and left-handed thrower.

He’s listed as 3-feet-7, 65 pounds. And next to his affiliation, STL A, there is a string of zeros . . . and a 1 for the walk.

His tiny uniform is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

In the weeks after his appearance and the publication of the famous photograph of him at bat, taken by St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer Jack January--Fishel had forgotten to tell the other photographers to stick around for the first inning of the second game--Gaedel tried to shop himself around to other owners.

Boldly, he talked of wanting to face Bob Feller or Dizzy Trout. He made some personal appearances, and Fishel estimated later that Gaedel earned $16,000 to $17,000 from his inning in the majors.

Ten days after his plate appearance, while appearing in Cincinnati with a rodeo, Gaedel was in the news again. Two policemen arrested him after he cursed one of them for calling him “A little boy.”

Gaedel died June 18, 1961, shortly after he was beaten on the street in Chicago by two muggers who stole $11 from him. He was 36. He managed to reach his home, where he still lived with his mother.

Helene Gaedel, who knew that her son also had an enlarged heart and high blood pressure, said that Eddie went to bed and became unconscious. An ambulance was called, but he could not be revived.

Eddie Gaedel was buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery, in Evergreen Park, Ill.

Bill Veeck died in 1986.

A Short Stay: Eddie Gaedel’s career, as documented in the Baseball Encyclopedia.

Eddie Gaedel

GAEDEL, EDWARD CARL

B. June 8, 1925, Chicago, Ill.

D. June 18, 1961, Chicago, Ill.

BR TL 3’7” 65 lbs.

HR Pinch Hit G AB H 2B 3B HR % R RBI BB SO SB BA SA AB H G by POS 1951 STL A 1 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 1 0 0 - - 0 0