RetroSimba

Yellow baseballs couldn’t help a Cardinals club from feeling blue about a season coming apart at the seams.

On Aug. 2, 1938, in the first game of a doubleheader between the Cardinals and Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, yellow baseballs were used in a major-league game for the first time.

To the Cardinals, the color of the baseball didn’t make any difference in helping their hitting or pitching. The Dodgers beat the Cardinals, 6-2, using yellow baseballs in the opener, and in the second game, when standard white baseballs were brought back into play, the Dodgers won again, 9-3.

Afterward, Cardinals manager Frankie Frisch suggested his players should try using red baseballs. “Maybe it would make them mad,” seeing red, Frisch said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The losses dropped the Cardinals’ record to 38-54 and intensified speculation about Frisch’s job security. Two months later, Frisch was fired and the Cardinals went on to finish with a 71-80 mark, their fewest wins in a season since 1924.

Higher visibility

Frederick H. Rahr, a color engineer from New York, developed the yellow baseball after he witnessed Tigers catcher Mickey Cochrane get beaned by a pitch at Yankees Stadium in 1937. Rahr determined a yellow baseball would make the game safer to play because it would be easier to see than a white baseball.

“It is intended primarily to stop beanball accidents,” Rahr told The Sporting News.

Rahr convinced the baseball coaches at Columbia University and Fordham to use his yellow baseball in a game in April 1938. Dodgers executive Larry MacPhail took notice and got permission from National League president Ford Frick to try the yellow baseball in a regular-season game.

The yellow ball with red stitches was a delight for sportswriters, who described it in their game reports as a “stitched lemon,” a “golden globe,” “canary yellow” and having “a dandelion hue.”

Play ball

Played on a bright Tuesday afternoon, the game with the yellow baseball seemed like any other game.

“I didn’t see much difference,” plate umpire George Barr said to The Sporting News.

Said Cardinals outfielder Joe Medwick, the reigning National League batting champion: “When you’re hitting, the ball rides, no matter if it’s red, white or blue.”

The majority of spectators liked the yellow baseball and said they could follow it well, the New York Times reported. Most of the Cardinals and Dodgers were OK with it, too.

“I saw it all right,” Dodgers coach Babe Ruth told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “I hit three of them out of the park in batting practice.”

Other positive reviews:

_ Don Gutteridge, Cardinals third baseman: “I’d like to hit against it all the time.”

_ Leo Durocher, Dodgers shortstop; “It suited me all right. I couldn’t find any fault with it.”

_ Merv Shea, Dodgers catcher: “It’s much easier to follow on a low pitch because the cover of the ball doesn’t reflect the glare of the sun.”

The biggest complaint concerned the dye used to make the baseballs yellow.

“The dye came off on my fingers and the ball was a bit too slippery for my knuckleball,” said Dodgers starter Freddie Fitzsimmons.

Fitzsimmons kept wiping the dye from his hand onto his jersey and pants and “the entire side of his uniform was stained” yellow, according to United Press.

Among the other criticisms:

_ Turk Stainback, Dodgers outfielder: “I noticed the dye came off the ball and onto the bat after it was hit.”

_ Frenchy Bordagaray, Cardinals outfielder: “The yellow ball is too hard to autograph.”

“The yellow cover soiled easily and the umpires were kept busy tossing in new spheres,” the St. Louis Star-Times noted.

Johnny Mize of the Cardinals socked one of the yellow baseballs over the fence in the seventh for the only home run of the game. Boxscore

In the second game, the Cardinals’ frustrations poured out when umpire Bill Stewart started to signal Durocher out at the plate, changed his mind and called him safe. Cardinals catcher Mickey Owen shoved Stewart, threw the white baseball high into the air and was ejected, the Post-Dispatch reported. Frisch came onto the field and “took to kicking dirt over home plate as often as Stewart would brush the plate off” and also was ejected. Boxscore

Keeping with tradition

In an editorial, The Sporting News, urged more use of the yellow baseballs.

“Though the ball cannot be regarded as a complete success at present … enough favorable evidence was adduced to warrant a continuation of the experiment,” The Sporting News wrote. “Anything that contributes to greater safety in the game merits a thorough trial.”

After the 1938 season, baseball officials approved teams using yellow baseballs in games as long as both teams were in agreement, but the experiments were done only a couple of more times in 1939.

In 1973, at the request of Athletics owner Charlie Finley, major-league officials allowed the use of orange baseballs in an exhibition game between the Athletics and Indians in Arizona, but the idea didn’t catch on.