Cardinals third baseman Tommy Glaviano experienced a fielder’s worst nightmare.
On May 18, 1950, Glaviano made four errors, including three in a row in the ninth inning, in a game against the Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The Cardinals, who led 8-0 entering the eighth inning, lost 9-8.
The Cardinals committed a total of six errors in the game, but the most costly were Glaviano’s gaffes in the ninth, when the Dodgers scored five times in what the New York Daily News described “as miraculous a finish as this famed Ebbets Field grotto had ever seen.”
Hot corner hustler
Glaviano was born and raised in Sacramento. The Cardinals signed him when he was 17. After two seasons in the Cardinals’ farm system, Glaviano served three years (1943-45) in the Coast Guard before returning to the minors.
After producing a .415 on-base percentage in 106 games for Columbus, Ohio, in 1948, Glaviano won the Cardinals’ third base job at spring training in 1949.
At 5 feet 9 and 175 pounds, Glaviano was “a short, stocky throwback to the glamorous Gashouse Gang era,” The Sporting News reported.
Bob Broeg of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described Glaviano as “a sawed-off Pepper Martin.”
Glaviano, 25, made his major-league debut on April 19, 1949, in the Cardinals’ season opener versus the Reds at Cincinnati.
The Reds led, 1-0, in the sixth inning and had runners on second and third, with two outs, when Harry Brecheen got Virgil Stallcup to hit a slow grounder. Glaviano went far to his left, gloved the ball and whipped a side-armed throw to first. The ball sailed off target, struck Stallcup in the left cheek and bounced away, allowing both runners to score on the error. The Reds won, 3-1. Boxscore
Glaviano and another rookie, Eddie Kazak, split time at third base for the 1949 Cardinals. Glaviano hit .267 and played the last three weeks of the season with torn cartilage in his throwing arm, The Sporting News reported.
Good start to season
In 1950, Kazak was the Opening Day third baseman for the Cardinals, but Glaviano took over a week into the season. “The pitchers feel better with him at third,” Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer told The Sporting News.
Batting leadoff, Glaviano quit swinging for homers and got more selective at the plate. “He’s learning how to hit outside pitching to the opposite field,” Dyer said.
Glaviano hit .342 in his first 20 games for the 1950 Cardinals and made four errors. He “has covered more ground than any Cardinals third baseman in years,” Broeg noted in the Post-Dispatch.
Storm clouds
On a raw overcast Thursday afternoon with a temperature of 50 degrees, the Cardinals played the finale of a three-game series at Brooklyn after losing the first two to the Dodgers.
Glaviano’s home run leading off the fourth inning against starter Joe Hatten extended the Cardinals’ lead to 4-0.
With the Cardinals ahead, 8-0, in the sixth, errors by Glaviano and second baseman Red Schoendienst put Dodgers runners on first and third with none out. Starter Howie Pollet escaped unscathed, getting Jackie Robinson on a grounder to the mound, Carl Furillo on a pop foul and Gil Hodges on a strikeout.
“Here was a game that appeared so far gone that even the manager had given up on it, and you couldn’t blame him,” Dick Young wrote in the New York Daily News. The Dodgers “had looked more miserable than the weather. They hadn’t hit, their pitching had been punk, and even their defense, which has been Brooklyn’s matchless pride, had been butchered.”
Pollet limited the Dodgers to four hits through seven innings, but in the eighth it began to rain and his back stiffened. Furillo hit a three-run home run. After Duke Snider and Bruce Edwards each singled, putting runners on first and third with two outs, Gerry Staley relieved Pollet and yielded a run-scoring single to Pee Wee Reese, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 8-4.
Throwing away a win
With rain falling steadily, Jim Russell led off the Dodgers’ ninth with a double against Staley and came home on Jackie Robinson’s double, making the score 8-5.
Al Brazle relieved and retired Furillo for the first out. Hodges hit a grounder to short, but Marty Marion “slipped on the muddy infield and couldn’t get his body behind a throw to first,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
Robinson stayed at second on the play and Hodges was safe with an infield single. Brazle walked Snider, loading the bases.
Roy Campanella hit a one-hopper to Glaviano, who hoped to start a game-ending double play. In his haste, Glaviano made a wide throw to second and Schoendienst had to leave the bag to catch it. Robinson scored from third on the error, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 8-6, and the bases remained loaded.
Rookie Cloyd Boyer relieved Brazle and got Eddie Miksis to hit a high bouncer directly to Glaviano. Instead of throwing to second for a likely forceout and the start of a possible game-ending double play, Glaviano fired the ball toward home. The wild toss pulled catcher Del Rice off the plate and he “had to dive flat on his face for the save,” the New York Daily News reported.
Hodges scored from third on Glaviano’s second consecutive error, getting the Dodgers within a run at 8-7, and the bases still were full.
Reese came up next and hit a sharp grounder to Glaviano, who was positioned near the bag. “He had planned to scoop it up, step on third and fire to first” to complete a game-ending double play, the New York Daily News reported.
Instead, in moving toward the bag, Glaviano let the ball trickle through his legs and roll into short left field for an error. Snider and Campanella scored. giving the Dodgers a 9-8 victory. Boxscore
Stayin’ alive
Dick Young’s lead paragraph in the next morning’s New York Daily News was a gem: “Joe Garagiola didn’t get any sleep last night. He lay awake to make sure his roommate, Tommy Glaviano, wouldn’t take a walk out a window.”
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat described the collapse as “one of the goofiest shows” staged by the Cardinals. The Post-Dispatch called it “a cruel body blow.”
In the clubhouse, Glaviano sat with his head lowered, “trying to fight back tears that wanted to pour like the chilling rain which fell from the time the Dodgers’ bats first began to rattle,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
“The kid’s insides are eating him out,” said Cardinals reserve infielder Eddie Miller, “but he’ll be all right.”
Dyer said, “That was the most bitter defeat of any I’ve had in the years I’ve managed.”
In the Post-Dispatch, Broeg described Glaviano as a third baseman “with a thick chest, courage and agility” as well as “a scatter arm.”
“About his arm,” Dyer said, “it hasn’t been as accurate since he hurt his right shoulder two years ago at Columbus. I think it locks on him when he throws in a hurry, spoiling his aim.”
Dyer stuck with Glaviano at third base the rest of the 1950 season. He hit .285 with 29 doubles and scored 92 runs. His 25 errors at third base were one less than the 26 of the Giants’ Hank Thompson, who made the most misplays among 1950 National League third basemen.
Marty Marion became Cardinals manager in 1951 and decided at spring training to move Glaviano to center field. On April 10, a week before the regular season opened, Glaviano crashed into an outfield wall pursuing a drive in an exhibition game against the Browns and injured his right shoulder.
Glaviano wasn’t the same after the injury. He was a utility player for the Cardinals in 1951 and 1952. The Phillies claimed him on waivers and he spent 1953, his final season in the majors, with them.
Even hall of famer Brooks Robinson once committed three errors in the same inning. It’s a good thing Tommy was rooming with Joe Garagiola. In fact, after a bad day like that, probably the only better roommate would have been Bob Eucker.
Here is a link to the Associated Press report on Brooks Robinson making 3 errors in an inning vs. the Athletics in 1971: https://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/29/archives/bad-night-for-brooks-3-errors-in-one-inning.html
[…] 8: 3B Tommy Glaviano, 1950, .285 BA, .421 OBP, 94 runs, 4.0 WAR Called “a short, stocky throwback to the glamorous Gashouse Gang era” by The Sporting News, the 5-foot-9-inch Glaviano was an ideal […]