Mace Brown, 92; Pitcher Gave Up Pivotal Homer

Mace Brown, one of the first pitchers in baseball to excel in a relief role but perhaps better known for giving up Gabby Hartnett’s “homer in the gloamin’” that helped the Cubs clinch the National League pennant in 1938, has died. He was 92.

Brown, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Red Sox and twice led the National League in saves, died March 24 at his home in Greensboro, N.C. The cause of death was not announced.

The year he gave up the home run to Hartnett was also Brown’s best in the majors. He posted a 15-9 record with the Pirates and made the National League All-Star team, pitching the last three innings of a 4-1 victory over the American League. He also topped the league that season with 51 appearances while starting just two games as he helped pioneer the role of the relief pitcher as specialist.

His confrontation with Hartnett came late in the season in Chicago against a Cubs team that had a seven-game winning streak and was trailing the league-leading Pirates by a game and a half.

In those days, Wrigley Field had no lights, and the games generally didn’t start until 3 p.m. So it was not uncommon, especially late in the season, for darkness to fall if the game ran long. In that case the game would be finished the next day.

The game was tied 5-5 after 81/2 innings and Brown was called in to pitch the ninth. The umpires told both teams that the game would be called if the Cubs didn’t score in the bottom of the ninth.

With a devastating overhand curve, Brown quickly disposed of the first two Cub batters. Hartnett, who later said he could barely see the ball, swung and missed Brown’s first pitch and fouled off his next delivery. Brown came back with a third consecutive curveball, and despite the twilight--the “gloaming”--Hartnett connected with the pitch and drove it into the left-field stands.

Fans spilled onto the field as Hartnett rounded the bases and Cub teammates escorted him home.

Describing the moment, Hartnett said: “I swung with everything I had, and then I got that feeling--the kind of feeling you get when the blood rushes to your head and you get dizzy.”

And although a lot of fans said they didn’t know where the ball landed, Hartnett said he had no doubt when he hit the pitch. Neither did Brown.

“When Gabby hit it, I just turned and walked off the mound,” Brown recalled in an interview with The Times years ago. “I knew it was gone, and I didn’t want to see the celebrating.”

“It was a bad pitch. I tried to keep the ball away from him, and I didn’t.”

The next day the Cubs pounded the Pirates 10-1 to win the pennant. The “homer in the gloamin’” had fueled their drive to the World Series and gave Brown notoriety that would stay with him all his life.

Born in North English, Iowa, Brown had an early interest in baseball, but his high school did not have a baseball team, so Brown joined the track team. He attended the University of Iowa on a track scholarship--he was a javelin thrower--before joining the Iowa baseball team.

He first played catcher at Iowa because the team had a fine pitcher in Forrest Twogood, who later gained fame as a basketball coach at USC. But Brown switched to pitcher in his junior year and posted a 9-1 record, winning nearly half of Iowa’s games.

After playing semipro baseball in the summer, he was ruled ineligible for his senior year at Iowa. Signed by the St. Louis Cardinals, Brown spent the next four years in the minor leagues before Pittsburgh obtained his contract. He made his major league debut in 1935.

As a rookie that year, he witnessed one of the indelible moments in baseball history.

Babe Ruth, at the tail end of his illustrious career, was playing out the string with the Boston Braves.

On May 25, 1935, Ruth hit his last three home runs against the Pirates at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

After his last home run--his 714th, which sailed past the grandstand in right field and was later measured at about 600 feet--Ruth headed for the Braves’ clubhouse. But to do so, he had to pass through the Pirate dugout.

“I’m sitting on the end of the bench next to the runway,” Brown recalled in an interview with Associated Press years ago. “He came over and he happened to sit right next to me at the end of the bench,” Brown said. “He said, ‘Boy, that last one felt good.’ He sat there for a few minutes right beside me.”

Brown’s wife, Sue, who was in the stands that day, recorded Ruth’s three home runs on a movie camera, but over the years the film disintegrated and the Browns discarded it.

Brown pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers for one season before being traded to the Red Sox. In 1943, he led American League pitchers in number of games played. After military service in 1944 and 1945, Brown pitched one last season for the Red Sox, helping them to the pennant before retiring.

He worked as a scout for the Red Sox over the next three decades and was instrumental in their decision to draft Jim Rice, the slugging outfielder from South Carolina who was a Red Sox star in the 1970s.

Brown was asked a few years ago if “the homer in the gloamin’” still bothered him.

“Not anymore,” he said. “Like a fellow once said to me, ‘If it hadn’t been for Hartnett, nobody would have remembered you.’ He was right.”

Brown is survived by a son, a daughter, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.