Updated March 5, 2023)
After saying adios to the Cardinals, pitchers Max Lanier and Fred Martin and infielder Lou Klein returned from exile three years later and helped the club challenge the Dodgers in a down-to-the-wire National League pennant race.
On June 5, 1949, baseball commissioner Happy Chandler granted amnesty to 18 major-league players and six minor-leaguers who defected to the Mexican League, lifting their five-year bans and allowing them to apply for reinstatement to professional baseball in the United States.
The trio of Cardinals who defected _ Lanier, Martin and Klein _ all asked to come back and the Cardinals agreed.
“They’ve been punished enough and we’ll be glad to give them a chance to prove they’re still major leaguers,” Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Crossing the border
In 1946, Lanier, Martin and Klein broke their contracts with the Cardinals and jumped to the rival Mexican League in pursuit of more lucrative salaries. Chandler banned them all from returning to professional baseball in the U.S. for five years.
In addition to the three Cardinals, the most prominent defectors were Giants pitcher Sal Maglie and Dodgers catcher and former Cardinal Mickey Owen.
Lanier, Martin and another defector, Giants outfielder Danny Gardella, filed lawsuits against Major League Baseball, challenging the legality of the reserve clause that bound a player to the team holding his contract.
In explaining why he lifted the bans on the defectors, Chandler said he decided “to temper justice with mercy,” United Press reported.
Roster revamp
On the day Chandler granted amnesty, the Cardinals beat the Braves, improving their record to 23-19 and putting them 1.5 games behind the first-place Giants. The Cardinals figured to get a boost from the three Mexican League refugees.
Lanier, 33, was a left-handed pitcher who debuted with the Cardinals in 1938 and developed into a consistent winner. He posted records of 15-7 in 1943 and 17-12 in 1944 for pennant-winning Cardinals clubs. His ERA of 1.90 in 1943 was best in the National League. Lanier also was the winning pitcher for the Cardinals against the Browns in the Game 6 championship clincher of the 1944 World Series.
In 1946, Lanier was 6-0 with a 1.93 ERA for the Cardinals when he joined Martin and Klein in bolting to the Mexican League in May.
Martin, 33, was a right-handed pitcher who was 2-1 with a 4.08 ERA as a Cardinals rookie in 1946. ‘He knew how to pitch,” Cardinals outfielder Stan Musial told writer Roger Kahn. “Not the greatest fastball, but he was smart.”
Klein, 30, was a second baseman who debuted with the Cardinals in 1943 and had a big rookie season, batting .287 with 180 hits. In 1946, he was the Cardinals’ Opening Day second baseman before he slumped and was replaced by Red Schoendienst.
Dyer envisioned Lanier as a starting pitcher for the 1949 Cardinals, with Martin in the bullpen and Klein backing up Schoendienst at second and Marty Marion at shortstop.
“I don’t know of any player on the club who holds anything against them and won’t be happy to see them come back,” Musial said to the St. Louis Star-Times.
Helping hands
All three prodigal Cardinals helped the club in 1949. Lanier won five consecutive decisions between Aug. 28 and Sept. 21. Martin, who moved into the starting rotation, was 3-0 in August and 2-0 in September. Klein batted .323 with runners in scoring position.
In August 1949, Lanier and Martin dropped their antitrust suit against Organized Baseball. Two months later, Gardella also discontinued his lawsuit and signed with the Cardinals as a free agent.
On Sept. 20, 1949, after Martin improved his record to 6-0 with a win against the Phillies, the Cardinals were in first place, 1.5 games ahead of the Dodgers. Boxscore
The next day, Sept. 21, 1949, the Dodgers and Cardinals played a doubleheader at St. Louis. Lanier pitched a five-hit shutout in the opener and the Cardinals won, 1-0. Boxscore
The Dodgers won the second game, 5-0, behind the pitching of Preacher Roe, a former Cardinal, and a two-run triple by Luis Olmo, one of the defectors to the Mexican League who was allowed back. Boxscore.
After losing five of their next seven, the Cardinals went into the last day of the regular season a game behind the first-place Dodgers.
The Cardinals won their finale, 13-5 versus the Cubs at Chicago, but the Dodgers also won, beating the Phillies, 9-7, at Philadelphia on 10th-inning RBI-singles by Olmo and Duke Snider, and clinched the pennant. Boxscore
As for the trio who came back to the Cardinals from Mexico:
_ Lanier had a son, Hal Lanier, who became a major-league infielder for the Giants and Yankees, a coach with the Cardinals from 1981-85 and manager of the Astros from 1986-88.
_ Martin became a Cubs pitching instructor and taught the split-fingered pitch to prospect Bruce Sutter, who went on to a Hall of Fame career highlighted by his stint with the 1982 World Series champion Cardinals.
In an interview for the 2006 Baseball Hall of Fame yearbook, Sutter said, “It was just a stroke of luck that I ran into Fred Martin. He just said, ‘Try this pitch. It’s a pitch you don’t have to rotate your wrist or twist your elbow.’ It came to me right away.”
_ Klein managed the Cubs for parts of 1961-62 and 1965.
RetroSimba 
This period was something of a precursor to free agency. You have to wonder if the Cardinals could have continued the dynasty they had if the “three amigos” had stayed in St.louis. Good thing that Stan Musial resisted the temptation!! The money they offered Stan comes out to about 2.5 million by todays inflation. After reading this piece I did some of my own research and discovered that even Cardinals owner Sam Breadon was fined by baseball commissioner Happy Chandler just for the fact that he made an “unauthorized” trip to Mexico City in an attempt to come up with a truce and a working agreement with Jorge Pasquel.
Good stuff, Phillip. Thanks for the pertinent info and research.
[…] wasn’t the only jolt the Cardinals got that day. They also learned that three of their players, pitchers Max Lanier and Fred Martin and infielder Lou Klein, left the club, accepting offers to play in […]