In a preview of what was to come during a Hall of Fame career with the Cardinals, a confident Dizzy Dean dazzled in his debut game in the major leagues.
On Sept. 28, 1930, the last day of the regular season, Dean pitched a three-hitter in a 3-1 Cardinals triumph against the Pirates before an estimated 22,000 spectators at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. The game was completed in one hour, 22 minutes.
Dean’s dominant performance capped a glorious season for the Cardinals, who clinched the National League pennant two days earlier and were headed to the World Series to face the Athletics.
Red Smith of the St. Louis Star-Times noted, “Dean wrote a brilliant first chapter in the story of his major-league career … If a single performance in a single, meaningless game can be taken as a criterion, Dean is destined for stardom.”
Fast rise
A right-hander who was pitching semipro baseball in San Antonio, Dean, 20, signed with the Cardinals before the start of the 1930 season and was assigned to the minors. He was an immediate success, earning 25 wins. Dean was 17-8 for St. Joseph (Mo.) of the Western League and 8-2 for Houston of the Texas League.
The Cardinals called up Dean on Sept. 7, 1930, and he joined them for their final road trip of the season to New York, Boston, Brooklyn and Philadelphia.
Dean watched from the bench as the Cardinals won 12 of 15 games on the trip and took command of the pennant race.
Returning to St. Louis to complete the season with a series versus the Pirates, the Cardinals clinched the pennant with a win on Sept. 26, giving them a three-game lead over the second-place Cubs with two to play.
On the last day of the regular season, Sunday, Sept. 28, Cardinals manager Gabby Street gave the start to Dean, who’d been pestering him for a chance to pitch since joining the club three weeks earlier.
Speed and poise
For his debut, Dean wore cleats borrowed from pitcher Burleigh Grimes because he’d misplaced his own, according to the biography “Diz” by author Robert Gregory.
Dean was matched against Pirates starter Larry French, who’d defeated the Cardinals three times in 1930. The Pirates’ lineup featured two future Hall of Famers, Pie Traynor and Paul Waner.
In the first inning, two of the first three batters, Gus Dugas and George Grantham, reached on walks and Traynor drove in Dugas with a single.
Dean settled down and the Cardinals came back with two runs in the third. Dean contributed to the rally with a single and scored from third on a forceout.
Traynor got a leadoff single in the fourth but the Pirates didn’t get another hit, their last, until Ben Sankey singled in the seventh.
“All the time he was beating the Pirates’ ears, he was complaining his fastball wasn’t working,” Cardinals pitcher Bill Hallahan told the Star-Times.
Said Burleigh Grimes: “He was as unconcerned as if he was tossing rocks at a mud turtle on a log in the Meramec River.”
In the eighth inning, Grimes said, Dean “turned to me and said, ‘The Cardinals’ business office thinks I’m a dumb guy. My salary stops today and (traveling secretary) Clarence Lloyd had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to make the trip to Philadelphia for the World Series. He said the club would pay my expenses. I asked him would I draw dough for going and he said no. He thought he could put that over on me. I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”
Star quality
Throughout the game, Dean had the crowd “showering him with applause as he gyrated deceptively, flaunting a triple windup,” the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported. “Besides poise, he had tremendous speed, a fast curve and, lo and behold for a youngster, a change of pace which he employed smartly.”
In the Star-Times, Red Smith wrote, Dean “showed burning speed, a wide, sweeping curve, a clever change of pace and, best of all, unusual control for a rookie.”
Describing Dean as a “tall, gangling youth with large hands that dangle from grotesquely long arms,” Smith observed, “He wheels his right arm around his head like the lash of a whip, then throws with a sweeping sidearm motion, baffling to the batter and amusing to the crowd.”
“That delivery may earn him the name of Dizzy,” Smith concluded, “but it seems likely, too, to earn him the title of star.”
The Cardinals extended their lead to 3-1 with a run in the sixth and Dean did the rest, shutting down the Pirates. Boxscore
According to Red Smith, manager Gabby Street called Dean “the nearest thing to Walter Johnson I ever saw.”
Burleigh Grimes, like Walter Johnson, a future Hall of Famer, said of Dean, “I’ll predict that two years from now that kid will be the sensation of the National League.”
Rather than accept the Cardinals’ invitation to travel with them to Philadelphia for the start of the World Series, Dean headed home to San Antonio. On the way there, he stopped at St. Joseph, Mo., and told friends, “I was fed up on baseball, so I didn’t go to the World Series. I just told (club executive) Branch Rickey I’d wait until next year and then win three games in the first Series I ever attended.”
After spending the 1931 season in the minors at Houston, winning 26 games, Dean stuck with the Cardinals in 1932. As Grimes predicted, two years after Dean made his Cardinals debut, he was a sensation in 1932, leading National League pitchers in strikeouts.
Dean proved to be a good predictor, too. In his first World Series, in 1934, he didn’t win three games, but he did win two, including a shutout in the decisive Game 7, against the Tigers.
Of the top 8 all time leaders in career wins among Cardinal pitchers, only Dizzy Dean picked up a win decision in his debut game. That discussion that he had with Burleigh Grimes about deciding against traveling with the team to the World Series is too much!!
Thanks for the info. It illustrates how special it is to win a debut.