A Pitcher’s Dream

Dykes Potter once faced down the greatest slugger in baseball, yet he had a major league career so fleeting it left only the briefest mark in the record book.

At 88, sitting in the living room of his daughter’s home in northeastern Kentucky, Potter describes his victory in a 1934 exhibition game against the New York Yankees and the mighty Babe Ruth.

Ruth popped up after Lou Gehrig hit into a double play off Potter, the old pitcher says. That one inning has made him a celebrity of sorts nowadays, a living piece of baseball history.

“That was the highlight of my baseball career, to get to pitch against the Yankees,” said Potter, who played ball from 1931 to ’42.

A farm boy from outside the Ohio River city of Ashland, the 6-foot, 185-pound Potter followed in the footsteps of older brother Squire Potter when he signed a contract in 1931 with the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization. (Squire Potter’s major league career was nearly as brief as his younger brother’s. He pitched just three innings in a game for the Washington Senators in 1923.)

After beginning his career in Springfield, Mo., then moving to Rochester, N.Y., and Greensboro, N.C., Dykes Potter began the 1934 season in Rochester, pitching for the Red Wings of the International League.

On May 16, the barnstorming Yankees stopped in town on their way to Detroit and played an exhibition against the home team. Some 9,500 people came to watch.

“I just sat in the dugout. I figured, ‘Well, I’ll never pitch against guys like that,”’ Potter recalled.

But Rochester starter Ed Hurley gave up six runs in the first six innings and, with the game tied, Potter was summoned to pitch the seventh.

Before he went in, Potter said, he was told to let the Yankees get some hits, because that was what the fans wanted to see.

“I got all stirred up,” he said. “I never went out to lose ball games. I needed a job.”

For two innings, Potter used his best fastball and a sharp curve to shut down the powerful Yankee lineup.

Potter remembers Gehrig coming to bat with a runner on.

“They had a man at first, and Lou Gehrig was up. Well, he hit it in the second baseman’s hand for a double play,” he said. “Then Ruth was up, and he popped it up in the infield.”

As for getting Ruth out, Potter plays down the achievement.

“I felt pretty good about it,” he said. “But I’d been around some.”

When his teammates scored three runs, Potter ended up the winning pitcher in a 9-6 Rochester victory. “I figured after that I would get a job for sure on the regular ballclub,” he said.

He was wrong. Instead, it would take four more years, and stints in West Virginia, North Carolina, California and Iowa, before Potter got to the big leagues. He started the 1938 season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, made one-inning relief appearances on April 26 and May 2, then was sent back to the minors. He never returned to the majors.

His career can be summarized with this short notation in the major league record book: 2 innings pitched, 1 earned run, 4 hits, 1 strikeout.

By the start of the 1942 season, the United States was in World War II. Potter was ready to come home to Kentucky, his wife, Donna, and a family that would eventually include eight children.

Planning to take a job at a brickyard, he ended up at the Armco Steel plant when the war boosted production. He remained there, as a repairman, for the next quarter-century.

Potter retired in 1968, and Donna died in 1987. He now lives with one of his daughters, Alene Garvin.

Sixty-five years after he beat the Yankees, Potter is enjoying new recognition for his confrontation with Ruth. In recent months, he has been honored at events in several Midwestern states, including a baseball tournament in Portsmouth, Ohio.

“I get out with them every time I can,” Potter said. “They have me autographing baseballs and hats and gloves.”

Potter is not the only man still alive who pitched to Ruth. Paul Hopkins, who gave up Ruth’s 59th home run in 1927, is 94, and baseball historians say there are enough others that it would be impossible to compile a definitive list.

Even so, Greg Schwalenberg, curator of the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore, plans to display a ball signed by Potter at the museum, along with the story of Potter’s feat.

“Just the fact that he faced [Ruth], that’s enough to me,” he said.

When Potter makes public appearances, he brings reprints of photographs taken during his playing days, carefully signing each one. He said he wants to leave people with a good impression of ballplayers.

“Baseball players today, if you’re going to get an autograph, you’re going to have to pay,” he said.

He has no regrets about the years he spent in the game.

“I could throw that ball,” he said. “I loved baseball, yes I did.”