RetroSimba

(Updated May 26, 2020)

Ted Simmons slugged a Cubs player before he delivered a knockout punch to the entire Chicago team.

On Sept. 22, 1974, at St. Louis, Simmons hit Cubs batter Bill Madlock, setting off a melee.

Soon after, Simmons got the game-winning hit.

In the ninth inning, with the score tied at 5-5, Madlock led off against Al Hrabosky. When Hrabosky stepped off the mound, turned his back on the batter and went into his routine of psyching himself for the confrontation, Madlock backed away and went toward the on-deck circle.

After Madlock returned to the batter’s box, Hrabosky exited the mound again. Madlock responded by walking back to the on-deck circle.

“I know what they were doing,” Hrabosky said to the Associated Press. “They were trying to out-psyche me.”

Play ball

Irritated, plate umpire Shag Crawford walked toward Madlock and ordered him to return to the batter’s box. “I said, ‘Bill, get back here,’ ” Crawford told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I thought maybe he didn’t hear me because of the crowd noise. So I went after him and said it again.”

Cubs manager Jim Marshall and Jose Cardenal, the Cubs’ on-deck batter, rushed toward the umpire, protesting what they considered delay tactics by Hrabosky.

“The pitcher walked off the mound and just stood there,” Marshall said. “The pitcher is the one who should have been told to come in with the ball.”

Whirling away from Marshall and Cardenal, Crawford strode back toward the plate. With Marshall and Cardenal in pursuit, the umpire positioned himself behind the catcher, Simmons, and motioned to Hrabosky to make a pitch.

Hrabosky obliged and, with no one in the batter’s box, fired a high fastball that was called a strike.

Simmons rifled the ball back to Hrabosky and the pitcher quickly prepared to make another delivery.

Alarmed, Cardenal waved frantically to Madlock to get into the batter’s box.

Double trouble

Cardenal, fearing Madlock wouldn’t arrive in time, took a batting stance at the far end of the box. As he did, Madlock rushed into the box and took his stance in front of Cardenal, giving the Cubs two batters in the box, both with bats cocked, prepared to swing.

In his haste, Madlock brushed Simmons with the bat as Hrabosky’s fastball crossed the plate.

“I looked up and he (Madlock) was standing there with his bat, looking at me,” Simmons told reporters. “I said, ‘What are you looking at?’ And he said, ‘Get lost.’

“Then I hit him.”

Simba strikes

Simmons landed a punch to Madlock’s chin. “I must have hit him pretty good,” Simmons said to the Post-Dispatch. “I cut my knuckles.”

The benches emptied and fighting ensued. You can see a video of the incident by playing the first 1:05 of this You Tube clip.

After punching Madlock, Simmons pursued him up the third-base line and was struck from behind with a full body blow by Cubs first baseman Andre Thornton.

In a 2020 interview with Stan McNeal of Cardinals Gameday Magazine, Simmons recalled, “I got hit harder than I ever had been in my life when Andre Thornton ran up and laid into me … I went down and just laid there. I couldn’t breathe. I’m not mad that he hit me from behind because I’d have done the same thing if I had been him.”

Pat Dean, widow of Hall of Famer Dizzy Dean, whose uniform No. 17 was retired by the Cardinals before the game, witnessed the fight and told the Post-Dispatch, “They must have done this for Diz. It looked like the old Gashouse Gang.”

When order was restored, only Marshall was ejected because he complained to Crawford about Simmons remaining in the game. “I don’t think players should be thrown out for fighting,” Crawford told the Chicago Tribune.

Hrabosky said the fight “really psyched me up. It was just what the doctor ordered.” Hrabosky struck out Madlock and got Cardenal to pop out to Simmons before striking out pitcher Dave LaRoche.

In the bottom of the ninth, Lou Brock singled and advanced to second when Reggie Smith walked. With two outs, Simmons, batting right-handed, laced a single to center, scoring Brock and giving the Cardinals a 6-5 victory. Boxscore

Years later, in an interview with the Baseball Hall of Fame magazine, “Memories and Dreams,” Hrabosky said of Simmons, “His best attributes were his strong will to win and his dedication to being out there every day. He could motivate me better than anybody I’ve ever been around.”

The emotional triumph gave the division-leading Cardinals a 1.5-game advantage over the second-place Pirates with nine games remaining.

Basking in the afterglow of victory, Hrabosky said, “I really don’t intend to make people or players mad at me with what I’m doing. I’m just doing it for myself. But, if it makes them mad, it’s just serving my purpose all the more.”