Let’s Play Two! : Doubleheaders Have Become Rare and Unpopular Among Players, but Many Old-Timers Loved Them

The year was 1950. The site was Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The stakes were high.

Locked in a tight pennant race with the Phillies in September, the Brooklyn Dodgers, behind right-hander Don Newcombe, won the first game of a doubleheader, 2-0.

Newcombe, rookie of the year the previous season, had held Philadelphia to three hits, throwing 83 pitches.

As he walked off the mound, the 6-foot-4, 220-pounder was greeted by his manager, Burt Shotton.

“That was an easy game for a big guy like you,” Shotton told Newcombe. “A big guy like you should be able to pitch two.”

Newcombe never blinked. He merely nodded, indicating that he was willing to head back out to the mound for the second game.

“You’re kidding,” Shotton said.

Not Newcombe.

“Give me the ball,” he told his manager. “If we’ve got to have it, I’ll pitch.”

Newcombe went into the clubhouse, got a quick rubdown, changed his shirt, then went out to warm up.

Shibe Park crowds weren’t known for their respect for opposing pitchers, especially from the hated Dodgers. Especially when the Phillies were making a rare appearance in a pennant race.

But when they saw Newcombe warming up to pitch again , there were no boos, only audible murmurs of surprise. The murmurs turned to cheers when Newcombe was announced as the starter.

The right-hander’s volunteer assignment turned out to be more than a nice gesture. He pitched into the eighth inning. At that point, with the Dodgers trailing, 2-0, and Newcombe having thrown about 200 pitches for the day including warm-ups, Shotton figured enough was enough. When Newcombe’s spot in the batting order came up, Shotton pinch-hit for him.

The Dodgers scored three runs during the ninth inning and won, 3-2, too late for Newcombe to get credit for the victory.

But for all the credit he did get, Newcombe still wasn’t satisfied. Not then. Not four decades later. Not even after giving up two runs in 16 innings in two games.

Newcombe, now the Dodgers’ director of community relations, disagrees to this day with Shotton’s decision to hit for him.

“I resented it,” Newcombe said recently. “I was a good hitter.”

But even Newcombe acknowledges that pitching a doubleheader wasn’t a brilliant move for a 24-year-old who hoped to keep his arm trouble-free for years to come.

“It was a foolish thing to do,” Newcombe said. “But the club needed the win, and we had some pitchers with sore arms. I was young and strong.”

Newcombe’s feat probably was the last of its kind. For one thing, today’s pitchers are considered exceptional if they last one game.

For another, there aren’t many doubleheaders anymore. There were only two scheduled in the major leagues this year, Chicago at Montreal in the National League and Boston at Cleveland in the American. The rest all involve makeup games.

Doubleheaders have been around almost as long as the game itself. Worcester and Providence played the first one in National League history in 1882. The American League’s first was between Washington and Baltimore in 1901.

In the game’s early days, doubleheaders were commonplace. Baltimore, then a member of the National League, once won three games in one day and a doubleheader the next day from Louisville, giving Baltimore five victories in two days, a mark that seems destined never to be broken. That was in 1896.

The Boston Braves played nine consecutive doubleheaders in 1928. The New York Yankees won a record five doubleheaders in a row--they played no single games in between--in 1906. The Braves lost five doubleheaders in a row in 1928. And on Aug. 25, 1953, every matchup on the National League schedule was a twilight-night doubleheader.

Those days are gone, probably forever. Doubleheaders have gone the way of the double feature in movie theaters.

That is why the schedule the Dodgers are facing this week, a result of last spring’s Los Angeles riots, has drawn so much attention. With a doubleheader Friday and three more in succession starting Monday, the Dodgers will have played 10 games in six days.

Much has been made of the strain on the club, but Bill Rigney, an executive with the Oakland Athletics, disagrees. Rigney was the manager of the Angels in 1961 when the club played 15 doubleheaders.

“They make so damn much of it now when a player has to play two games in one day,” Rigney said from his Oakland home.

“I just don’t see what the big deal is. We had guys who played 162 games.

“Too much is made these days of a guy playing a game for what, 2 1/2 to three hours? I remember when I played in the (Pacific) Coast League, we would play Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and a doubleheader on Sunday, and we thought it was great that we got to play two games at the end of the week.”

As the shortstop for the Oakland Oaks of the PCL, Rigney, now 74, played in 173 games in 1941 and in 177 the next season.

“Somehow, people have come up with the idea that a doubleheader is a hardship,” Rigney said.

“It’s like some people don’t play a day game after a night game. Why is that? There is no way you would get injured from playing too much. Just play hard. My gosh, it’s a game.”

In Rigney’s playing days, that was a common view. One season, the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern League had five doubleheaders in six days. Art Fowler, who later pitched for the Angels, started one game in each of the five doubleheaders, winding up with a 3-1 record for the week.

Gene Mauch, a teammate of Fowler on that team and later an Angel manager, agrees with Rigney about doubleheaders.

“You don’t get physically tired playing baseball--ever,” he said from his home in Coachella Valley. “And you don’t get mentally tired. You shouldn’t.”

One season in the early ‘60s, when Mauch was managing them, the Phillies had two doubleheaders, prompting some loud complaining from the players, particularly pitcher Larry Jackson, the player representative.

Mauch pulled Jackson aside, and asked: “How much do you make?”

Jackson: “You know how much I make, $55,000 (a large salary in those days).”

Mauch: “Well, if somebody had told you 15 years ago that you’d make $55,000 a year playing baseball, you’d have been happy to play four games in two days.”

Jackson: “I guess you’re right, Skipper.”

End of grousing.

The flip side of that attitude belongs to Ernie Banks, the Hall of Fame shortstop of the Chicago Cubs who would say, “Great day. Let’s play two.”

Dutch Levsen could appreciate that attitude. A right-hander for the Cleveland Indians, Levsen topped the accomplishments of both Fowler and Don Newcombe.

In August of 1926, Levsen pitched both ends of a doubleheader against the Boston Red Sox. Cleveland won by 6-1 and 5-1 with Levsen getting complete-game victories in both games.

Stan Musial, the Hall of Famer with the St. Louis Cardinals, is another with pleasant memories of doubleheaders.

On May 2, 1954, playing in a doubleheader against the New York Giants in St. Louis, Musial, in 10 at-bats, had two walks, a single and five home runs.

With three homers in the first game and two in the second, Musial became the first major leaguer to hit that many on one day, a mark later equaled by Nate Colbert of the San Diego Padres in 1972.

“When I was done that day, they told me I had broken some kind of record for doubleheaders,” Musial said from his home in St. Louis.

“I thought for sure Babe Ruth or Jimmie Foxx or Hank Greenberg would have done it.”

Musial nearly had a sixth that day. Willie Mays caught up with a drive by Musial to center field that carried more than 400 feet.

“My last time up in the second game, I tried to hit one more,” Musial said. “You don’t usually hit a home run when you try to and, sure enough, I popped up.”

Musial remembers being greeted by his son, Dick, then a teen-ager, after the game.

“Your dad had a pretty great day, huh?” the older Musial said to his son.

Young Dick, obviously not easy to impress, replied: “They must have been throwing them down the middle.”

Musial can recall some long, hot days on that St. Louis infield during summer doubleheaders. It got so bad after one such day, he said, that he went home and plopped his aching toes into a bucket of water.

Doubleheaders have produced lots of memorable performances, some not as pleasurable as those of Levsen, Musial and Colbert.

As playing manager of the Giants, Mel Ott got thrown out of both games of a doubleheader in 1946. And the Angels’ Albie Pearson once went hitless in 11 at-bats for a doubleheader.

For Banks, however, doubleheaders were fun.

“I enjoyed playing two,” he said from his Encino home, his enthusiasm undiminished at 61.

“Doubleheaders allow you to go to another level. When you’re faced with a doubleheader, don’t talk about it. Just do it.”

Having done it all in a 19-year career, did Banks finish with any goals unfulfilled?

“My one remaining goal,” he said, “would be to go out one day and play three.”