Seeing Was Barely Believing : A Young Boy’s Dream Comes True as He Watches the Giants’ Carl Hubbell Use His Screwball to Baffle the AL’s Best Hitters in the 1934 All-Star Game

It was the week before baseball’s second All-Star game, scheduled for the Polo Grounds in New York on July 10, 1934.

How could a 14-year-old catcher for the East End Pals, a sandlot team from Stoneham, Mass., get to New York to see the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? And Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin? And Lefty Gomez and Carl Hubbell?

In those Depression years, train fare from Boston to Grand Central Station was an extraordinary expense that a family of small means could ill afford. But the young catcher knew that mothers can and usually do work small miracles.

The boy told his mother he didn’t know whether the game would be broadcast on radio and none of his buddies had read anything about a broadcast either.

Besides, the family didn’t have a radio.

He would sure like to see that game in person and he would work real hard in school next semester. And he would be safe in New York. He could stay with his cousins and Aunt Peggy in Brooklyn.

Well, as mothers do, she found a way to buy him a round-trip ticket and sent him off with a lunch bag and money for the ballgame. Meanwhile, he decided to take along his baseball bat, a scuffed up baseball and his Joe Medwick glove. His team couldn’t afford a catcher’s mitt.

Of course, those on the train asked where he was going with his baseball gear and teased him about where he would play if he got into the game.

He knew the players’ names and their teams and he knew that the Babe had won the 1933 inaugural All-Star game in Chicago with a two-run homer.

Someone asked him about Hubbell’s screwball and the only answer he had was that he was eager to see it but he really didn’t know what it did.

He followed directions from his cousin George and arrived early at the Polo Grounds and feasted his eyes on the ballpark, enjoying the excitement from a seat about as high as youcould could get behind home plate.

He had his glove and pounded his fist into it every now and then. He had left his bat and ball behind. His cousins didn’t think he’d need them.

Finally, the game began.

Very soon, he saw what Hubbell, the Giants’ left-hander, could do with the mysterious screwball. He could strike players out.

In the first inning, with two American Leaguers on base, he struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx--on 12 pitches!

In the second inning, Hubbell struck out Al Simmons and Joe Cronin.

Five of the greatest players of their time struck out, consecutively! Was he ever lucky to see all this! The East End Pals wouldn’t believe it!

Despite Hubbell, the American League won the game, 9-7. But that was really secondary, after what the Giants’ star had done to those five great hitters.

The young catcher could hardly wait to get home and tell his folks and the guys what a fantastic game he had seen. And Medwick, his glove’s namesake? The Cardinal outfielder had hit a homer.

The young catcher headed back to Stoneham the next day and ran all the way home from the train station, with his bat, ball, glove, game program and satchel.

Mom was there to greet him, of course, as he rattled off what he had seen and what a great and unexpected event it had turned out to be in all of baseball history.

But he saw a knowing, somewhat impish smile on her face. She wanted to tell him something, but he kept talking about the great event he had seen and he wanted to go talk to the East End Pals and tell them about the game.

Finally, she said, “All right, Dickie boy. Go ahead. They know all about it. It was on radio, you know.”