Tony Lazzeri Makes Bronx Bomber Home Run History

Today in Pinstripe Past, I’m taking you back to one of the most famous seasons in Yankees history, 1927, when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig steamrolled pitchers on a daily basis, but neither of them - or any other Yankee to that point - achieved what Tony Lazzeri did against the Chicago White Sox. Lets get to it.

NEW YORK (June 8, 1927) - If you want to win a bar bet with a buddy, offer up this as a question, give him or her three opportunities to answer, and if they don’t get it right, the next drink is on them: Who was the first Yankee to hit three home runs in a single game?

Well, Babe Ruth would be a pretty good guess. Lou Gehrig would be, too. Wrong and wrong. As for that third guess, if it wasn’t either of those two, they’re probably going to wonder whether it was possible that the Yankees went into the mid-1930s before this happened, and Joe DiMaggio would be a logical guess. Three strikes and you’re out.

Tony Lazzeri is the answer, and it happened in 1927, his second season in the big leagues when he sat in the middle of the Yankees’ batting order that became known as Murderers’ Row.

In a wild game at Yankee Stadium that featured 23 runs, 34 hits and 15 walks, all of which took three hours and 15 minutes which was an eternity in those days, Lazzeri carried the Yankees to a 12-11 victory over the White Sox.

He hit a two-run shot to the short porch in right off Red Faber in the second inning; an inside-the-park homer to deep center off Faber in the eighth that brought the trailing Yankees within 9-6; and then, with the Yankees down 11-6 entering the bottom of the ninth, Earle Combs singled, Ruth singled, Gehrig doubled home one run, Cedric Durst singled home two, and after Chicago relieved Faber with Sarge Connally, Lazzeri hit a dramatic game-tying two-run homer to right.

Two innings later, Durst tripled and the White Sox wisely on that day walked Lazzeri intentionally, but Ray Morehart made that move moot when he singled off Connally to win the game.

Lazzeri’s home run binge probably wasn’t all that surprising to the Yankees. In his three minor league seasons before general manager Ed Barrow bought his contract from Triple-A Salt Lake City for $50,000, Lazzeri slugged 135 home runs including 60 in 1925. True, he took advantage of the high altitude in Utah’s largest city, plus the ridiculously long 192-game Pacific Coast League schedule, but no one in baseball history had ever hit 60 in one year. Ruth, of course, became the first major leaguer to do it in 1927.

That last year in Salt Lake City was also when he got his nickname, Poosh ‘Em Up Tony, one that stuck for his entire career. A local Italian restauranteur and fan would yell that phrase when his favorite Italian came to the plate, encouraging him to push up the baserunners.

Barrow believed so much in Lazzeri’s future that even though he had been warned that Lazzeri suffered from epilepsy, Barrow’s cold response was, “As long as he doesn’t take fits between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, that’s good enough for me.”

As a rookie in 1926, he was an instant hit as he batted .275, swatted 18 home runs and had a whopping 117 RBI, at the time the sixth-highest total ever for a second baseman. Both totals were also more than Gehrig’s 16 homers and 109 RBI. With Lazzeri anchored at second base and primarily slotted sixth in the batting order, the Yankees won their first AL pennant since 1923, but they lost the World Series in seven games to the Cardinals and many people at the time unfairly painted Lazzeri as the goat.

In the bottom of the seventh in Game 7 at Yankee Stadium, Lazzeri came to the plate with two outs, the bases loaded and the Yankees trailing 3-2. This was the Yankees chance to win the game, there was no doubt about that, and the crowd of more than 38,000 - curiously about half the massive ballpark’s capacity - bubbled in anticipation.

Lazzeri had struck out twice against Cardinals starter Jesse Haines, the righty’s only two whiffs of the day, but Lazzeri was not going to face him. Cardinals player-manager Rogers Hornsby was forced to lift Haines because he had developed a blister on his throwing hand.

Hornsby signaled to the bullpen for veteran Grover Cleveland Alexander, a move that raised eyebrows from New York to St. Louis. The 39-year-old future Hall of Famer - who had been signed off waivers from the Cubs in June - had already pitched two complete game victories including the day before in Game 6.

As the story goes, Alexander, who battled alcoholism, figured his work for the Series was done so he had celebrated hard following Game 6 and came to Yankee Stadium the next day expecting to be a spectator and in no shape to pitch.

However, Hornsby knew Lazzeri had gone 0-for-4 against Alexander in Game 6, so he called on the old man, who was no longer the same pitcher who had led the NL in victories in six seasons, in ERA five times, and would finish his 20-year career with a record of 373-208 and an ERA of 2.56. Hornsby, also a future Hall of Famer, had a hunch that in the biggest moment of the Series, Old Pete as he was known, was the right man for the job.

Alexander worked the count to 1-1, then made a mistake that nearly cost his team the Series. He threw a belt-high fastball over the plate and Lazzeri crushed it deep to left field, but the ball hooked foul at the last instant. “Less than a foot made the difference between a hero and a bum,” Alexander would later say.

After breathing a boozy sigh of relief, Alexander threw a nasty curve that Lazzeri swung at and missed, ending the threat. “I gave him the signals on those pitches, but it didn’t make any difference what the signal was,” said Cardinals catcher Bob O’Farrell. “His excellent control was his greatest asset. Lazzeri would have had to have been Houdini to get good wood on that last pitch.”

Alexander proceeded to pitch two more scoreless innings and the Series came to a stunning end when Ruth, who had drawn a two-out walk in the bottom of the ninth, got caught stealing for the final out, an unfathomable mistake by a player who certainly wasn’t fleet afoot.

Despite that, Lazzeri wore the goat horns for having struck out three times in the game and it burned Yankees manager Miller Huggins. “Here was the man who really made the 1926 club, and all people ever said about him was that Alexander struck him out,” Huggins said before spring training in 1927. “Anyone can strike out, but ballplayers like Lazzeri come along once in a generation.”

Lazzeri proved Huggins correct. He went on to a spectacular career that saw him hit 178 home runs, drive in 1,194 runs, and finish with a slash line of .292 average/.380 on-base/.467 slug for an OPS of .846.

As momentous as his three-homer game was against the White Sox, it paled in comparison to what is arguably the greatest game any hitter has ever had. On May 24, 1936 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia when the Yankees destroyed the A’s 25-2, Lazzeri set the still-standing AL record for most RBIs in a game with 11, and he matched his feat of three home runs, only he did so in even grander style, literally. He became the first major league player - and one of only 13 in history - to hit two grand slams in one game.

Lazzeri eventually got into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991, voted in by the veterans committee. One of the reasons it took so long is that he was a famously quiet and not a particularly friendly man, especially around baseball writers, and the writers were the men who voted for the Hall of Fame. “Interviewing that guy is like mining coal with a nail file and a pair of scissors,” one of them once said.

Yet it was wrong to have held his personality against him. With all the great players around him, Lazzeri was one of the most important cogs in the machine that won six pennants and five World Series during his 12 Yankee seasons. Longtime American League umpire Tom Connolly once remarked that, “When things get tough out there, the others don’t look to Ruth or any of the veterans; they look to (Lazzeri), and he never fails them.”

Sadly, after a brief stint as a minor league manager, Lazzeri died in 1946 at the age of 42 when he fell down a flight of stairs after suffering an epileptic fit. When asked on the occasion of his passing, Barrow said of Lazzeri, “He was one of the greatest ballplayers I have ever known.”

⚾ June 4, 1988: Rickey Henderson spent only 4 ½ seasons in pinstripes, but that was long enough to make an impact on the team’s illustrious history. During a 14-inning 7-6 loss to the Orioles, Henderson stole two bases which gave him 249 as a Yankee, moving him to No. 1 on the all-time list.

He would end up with 326 before he was traded in the middle of 1989, and his record stood until Derek Jeter broke it. Jeter played 20 years for the Yankees and he stole 358. Henderson, of course, is the all-time MLB leader with 1,406, a record that will never be broken.

⚾ June 6, 1934: Myril Hoag played seven seasons for the Yankees, mostly as a part-time player between 1931-38, and he was part of three World Series winning teams so he was a pretty good player late in the Ruth-Gehrig era and then early in the Gehrig-Joe DiMaggio era. But it’s crazy that only two players in team history achieved what Hoag did on this day when he rapped out six hits during a 15-3 rout of the Red Sox at Fenway Park.

The only other Yankee to do it in a nine-inning game also occurred this week, Johnny Damon on June 7, 2008. There have only been 40 games in American League history where a player had at least six hits in nine innings, and there have been 21 games where it happened in an extra-inning game including Gerald Williams of the Yankees in 1996.