About the same time that fans of Milwaukee baseball learned the Braves planned to abandon them, the club’s most prominent pitcher, Warren Spahn, got cast aside, too.
So, when Spahn returned to Milwaukee for the first time as a member of the Mets, the fans there came out to cheer for him and against the Braves.
The drama didn’t end there. Spahn was matched that night against his protege and former road roommate, Wade Blasingame. Both were destined to wind up with a Cardinals farm team.
Mr. Brave
A left-hander who developed into a consistently big winner, Spahn began his major-league career with the 1942 Boston Braves (managed by Casey Stengel), served in combat during World War II, and moved with the club to Milwaukee in 1953. He was revered in Milwaukee for being the staff ace and for helping the Braves win two National League pennants (1957 and 1958) and a World Series title (1957).
“No individual made a greater contribution to the fabulous Milwaukee baseball story,” The Sporting News reported on Spahn. “He was truly Mr. Brave.”
Spahn won 20 or more 13 times, including six years in a row (1956-61). He was 42 when he won 23 for the 1963 Braves.
Trouble developed for both Spahn and the Milwaukee fan base in 1964. Spahn quit winning, and was shifted to the bullpen against his wishes by manager Bobby Bragan. Spahn finished the season at 6-13 with a 5.29 ERA.
“He was dead on his feet,” Bragan told The Sporting News. “His legs were gone. He couldn’t get off the mound, and they were bunting him silly.
“If any other pitcher had been shelled the way he was,” Bragan said, “he would have been shipped to (minor-league) Denver.”
The Braves wanted Spahn to stop pitching and offered him several jobs in the organization, including a radio broadcasting gig, The Sporting News reported. Spahn wanted to play instead.
Then the Braves delivered a double salvo of damaging decisions to the fans of Milwaukee baseball:
_ In October 1964, the Braves’ board of directors voted to approve a move of the franchise to Atlanta. The Braves were ready to go, but the National League ordered them to play one more season in Milwaukee in 1965, putting them in a lame-duck position with a furious fan base.
_ A month later, the Braves sold Spahn’s contract to the Mets, a move the scorned fans viewed as thankless.
“They got rid of me because of the money, my salary,” Spahn told The Sporting News. According to the New York Daily News, Spahn was paid $85,000 in 1964.
Double duty
The Mets’ manager, Casey Stengel, gave him the dual role of pitcher and pitching coach. “Pitching is first, then coaching,” Spahn told The Sporting News. He said to Dick Young of the Daily News, “I think I’m still a 20-game winner.”
Whitey Ford, who attempted to be both pitcher and pitching coach for manager Yogi Berra’s 1964 Yankees and found it daunting, delivered a message to Spahn through The Sporting News: “You’ll be sorry.”
(Berra, who was fired by the Yankees after the club was defeated by the Cardinals in the 1964 World Series, joined Spahn as a coach on Stengel’s 1965 Mets staff. Berra played in four May games for the 1965 Mets, then stuck solely to coaching.)
Spahn, 44, won his first two decisions with the 1965 Mets. Both were complete games _ one against the Dodgers Boxscore and the other versus the Giants. Boxscore
(In his first start versus the Cardinals as a Met, Spahn was matched against Bob Gibson. Lou Brock hit a two-run home run and the Cardinals won, 4-3. Boxscore and radio broadcast)
Out for revenge
Spahn was 3-3 with a 3.51 ERA heading into his return to Milwaukee to oppose the Braves. The fans there were showing their contempt about the impending move to Atlanta by staying away from County Stadium.
After a paid crowd of 33,874 attended the 1965 home opener, subsequent April and May Braves home games drew an average paid attendance of 3,000. Paid attendance figures for the Cardinals’ three-game series at Milwaukee April 27-29 were 1,677, 1,324 and 2,182.
The turnout for the Thursday night game with the Mets on May 20, 1965, was a lot bigger _ 19,140 total (17,433 at full price, 1,707 youngsters admitted for 50 cents each) _ and most were there to pay tribute to Spahn.
“They made no secret of the fact they were rooting not for the Braves but for Spahn,” The Sporting News reported. “They cheered when his name was announced, when he took the mound and when he threw so much as a strike. They gave him a standing ovation when he went to bat.”
Dick Young of the Daily News observed, “He was to be their instrument of revenge. They came just for him, hoping, praying, he would beat the Braves.”
Several brought homemade banners and placards, including one with the message, “Down the Lousy Saboteurs. C’mon, Spahn, Mow Down the Betrayers,” the Daily News reported.
The Braves’ lineup that night featured Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Joe Torre, Felipe Alou and 21-year-old starting pitcher Wade Blasingame. A left-hander, Blasingame got called up to the Braves in June 1964 and roomed on the road with Spahn, who became a mentor. Blasingame was 9-5 (including a shutout of the pennant-bound Cardinals Boxscore) for the 1964 Braves.
“There is a growing feeling (Blasingame) is about to become the new Spahn,” The Sporting News reported.
Spahn “taught me more in a year than I ever knew before,” Blasingame told United Press International.
All business
Blasingame and Spahn waged a scoreless duel for four innings. Then, in the fifth, Spahn became unglued. The Braves scored twice, then loaded the bases for Eddie Mathews, the left-handed slugger who was, according to George Vecsey of Newsday, “one of Spahn’s closest friends.”
When the count got to 1-and-1, “I couldn’t afford to get behind,” Spahn explained to United Press International. “He had been looking bad on the slider all night, but I second-guessed myself and threw him a fastball. Trouble was, I was indecisive about whether to throw it down and in, or down and away. So I came right over the plate.”
Mathews clobbered it _ “a mile past the bleachers in right,” the Daily News reported _ for a grand slam, giving the Braves a 6-0 lead.
“Spahn kicked the top of the mound to dust, and picked up the resin bag and slammed it down,” Dick Young noted.
Mathews said to Newsday, “If I felt something special about hitting a home run against Spahn, I’d tell you. I didn’t. He’s just another pitcher.”
In his book, “Eddie Mathews and the National Pastime,” Mathews said, “Spahnie and I went out and drank together after the ballgame, but there was no sentiment while he was on the mound.”
Hank Aaron followed with a single, stole second and eventually scored on Rico Carty’s second double of the inning, capping the seven-run outburst.
Spahn completed the inning, then was lifted for a pinch-hitter.
Blasingame held the Mets hitless until the seventh when, with two outs, Ron Swoboda singled, scoring Billy Cowan, who had walked and moved to second on a wild pitch.
Blasingame, who finished with a one-hitter, told George Vecsey he felt bad for Spahn: “I know he wanted to beat us very much _ maybe more than I wanted to beat them.” Boxscore
Tulsa time
Four days after his loss at Milwaukee, Spahn pitched a complete game, beating Jim Bunning and the Phillies. Boxscore Then he lost eight in a row, and the Mets placed him on waivers. In 20 games with the Mets, Spahn was 4-12.
The Giants claimed him and he finished the 1965 season, his last, with them, going 3-4. Spahn’s 363 career wins are the most by a left-handed pitcher.
“I never did retire from pitching,” Spahn told writer Roger Kahn. “It was baseball that retired me.”
Wade Blasingame was 16-10 for the 1965 Braves, but never achieved another double-digit win season. In 10 years with the Braves, Astros and Yankees, he was 46-51.
(Blasingame and Jim Bouton were Astros teammates in 1969. In his book, “Ball Four,” Bouton wrote, “Today, Blasingame was wearing a blue bellbottom suit, blue shirt, a blue scarf at his throat and was smoking a long thin cigar, brown. Teammate Fred Gladding said, ‘Little boy blue, come blow my horn.’ Everybody on the bus went ‘Oooooh.’ Blasingame feigned indifference.”)
In 1967, Cardinals general manager Stan Musial hired Spahn to be manager of the Tulsa farm club. Spahn held the job for five years, but was gone by March 1973, when the Cardinals acquired Blasingame from the Yankees and assigned him to Tulsa.
Blasingame was 1-0 with an 0.90 ERA in two months with Tulsa before being traded to the Cubs’ Wichita farm team for another left-hander, Dan McGinn.
RetroSimba 
In the good old days when baseball was actually baseball. Sorry to say, but; I know longer follow professional sports.
Thanks for reading!
Nice article which reminded me of a quip attributed to Spahn where he stated “I pitched for Casey Stengel before, and after, he was a genius.”
I’m glad you contributed that Warren Spahn quote about Casey Stengel, Richard.
According to writer Roger Kahn, Stengel became disenchanted with Spahn in 1942 when the rookie disobeyed the manager’s order to brush back, or hit, Dodgers batter Pee Wee Reese. “Stengel stormed out to the mound and pulled me out of the game because I hadn’t decked Reese,” Spahn recalled to Kahn. “In the dugout, Stengel told me to pick up my railroad ticket to Hartford. I wasn’t staying with the Braves.”
According to Spahn, Stengel said to him, “Young man, you’ve got no guts.”
Two years later, Spahn received the Silver Star for gallantry while fighting the Nazis during World War II.
Just before Spahn was released by the Mets in 1965, Stengel told New York writers, “The hitters jump him so fast I can’t do a goddamn thing.”
It was sometime thereafter that Spahn gave the quote, “I knew Casey both before and after he was a genius.”
Mathews and Spahn going out for drinks after that game…priceless.
I’m glad you picked up that, Bruce. I thought that said a lot about the genuineness of their friendship.
One thing that always amazes me is that the Braves never had a losing season in Milwaukee. I enjoyed this article for many reasons, one being Spahn’s quote,
“I never did retire from pitching,” Spahn told writer Roger Kahn. “It was baseball that retired me.”
I love that. You know how often times fans criticize a player for sticking around too long, well, I think of it differently. To me, it demonstrates their love of the game. Rickey Henderson was like that too. And come to think of it, I think Bill Lee is still pitching and he’s at least 70 years young!
After his stint with the Mets and Giants in 1965, Spahn pitched a few games for the Mexico City Tigers in 1966. During his first season as Tulsa manager in 1967, Spahn, 46, put himself in the starting rotation in August: https://retrosimba.com/2011/01/29/warren-spahn-and-his-cardinals-connection/
“I enjoyed my work,” Spahn told Roger Kahn. “That’s one reason I wanted to pitch forever … How I loved to pitch. Whenever they gave me the ball and it was my turn, I always had the same thought: This is my day in the sun.”
I grew up in Tulsa and went to numerous Oilers games while Warren Spahn was manager. As he prepared to manage his first season, I remember he said, “If I jog out to the mound, it means I’ve got something to tell my pitcher. If I walk slowly to the mound, it means I’m changing pitchers.” Funny the things you remember.
I have some good memories of going to Oilers games.
Thanks for the insights, Michael. Those must have been fun times.
Warren Spahn’s 1968 Tulsa team won the Pacific Coast League championship and had 99 wins overall (regular season and playoffs). “One of the biggest thrills I had in the game was managing at Tulsa,” Spahn said to the Tulsa World. “The 1968 season was something.”
Tulsa sports historian Wayne McCombs said to the Tulsa World, “(Spahn) was an integral part of Tulsa’s pro baseball history. He was very proud of his 1968 team. That was one of the most dominant teams in minor league history. He always said he could take that team to the National or American League the next year (the expansion season of 1969) and play .500 ball.”
Incredible to realize that when the Braves moved to Milwaukee they led the league in attendance from 1954 to 1958. What a heartbreak that final season must have been for the Milwaukee fans. We from St.Louis can relate. With the way they bring up pitchers today will we ever see another Warren Spahn?
The last home game for the Milwaukee Braves was played before a paid crowd of 12,577 on Wednesday night, Sept. 22, 1965. Sandy Koufax and Wade Blasingame were the starting pitchers. The last batter of the game, Hank Aaron, lined into a double play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B09220MLN1965.htm
I see that Frank Bolling hit a grand slam off Koufax in that game. It was apparently the last grand slam ever hit off Koufax. Other than that, it musta been a sad night for the 12,577 faithful. Hard to imagine what that felt for season ticket holders and County Stadium employees.
In his autobiography, Eddie Mathews said of that final home game, “That was a very emotional night. The reality of leaving Milwaukee was sinking in. Most of the ballplayers didn’t want to go to Atlanta. Hank Aaron and I had been around the longest, and we certainly didn’t want to go. The fans cheered us all night, but when I came to bat in the 8th, for what looked like the last time in Milwaukee, the fans gave me about a two-minute standing ovation. I was overwhelmed. My eyes filled up with tears. I tried to bat, but I had to step out of the box three or four times.
“With the score tied, I batted once more in the 10th. Again the fans stood and cheered for a long time. I felt very humble at that moment. Everyone should have a moment like that in his life. Manager Bobby Bragan had me bunting. After 476 home runs in the big leagues, my final plate appearance in Milwaukee was a puny sacrifice bunt to advance a runner who never scored. We lost the game in the 11th. The whole crowd stood and gave us the longest ovation. Many of us came out of the dugout and kind of doffed our hats to those wonderful folks. It was the end of an era and the end of probably the best years of my life.”
That’s a beautiful tribute to Milwaukee fans. Thanks for sharing that Mark. Makes me want to read the Mathews autobiography.
The Braves’ attendance had increased by over 100,000 fans from 1963 to 1964 to over 900,000. That doesn’t seem like much today, but in the sixties a lot of teams didn’t draw a million, or close to it. The “fix was in” since about 1962 to move the franchise south. Spahn didn’t pitch badly for the 1965 Giants, and in 1967 pitched briefly for the Tulsa Oilers, delaying his entry into the Hall of Fame by a couple of years.
I wrote Spahn pitching for Tulsa before I read a previous reply about Spahn pitching for Tulsa. Sorry for the redundancy.
Warren Spahn indeed had some highlights for the 1965 Giants.
Spahn’s first win for the Giants came against the Cardinals at St. Louis on Aug. 8, 1965. It was a fascinating game. Mike Shannon caught basically the entire game for the Cardinals after Bob Uecker was injured by a foul tip off the bat of the leadoff man, Dick Schofield. In the fourth, Shannon doubled against Spahn and scored on pinch-hitter Bob Gibson’s double, also against Spahn: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B08080SLN1965.htm
Three weeks later, on Aug. 27, 1965, Spahn got his revenge against the Mets. Before a crowd of 56,167 that packed Shea Stadium to see Spahn, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, Spahn got the win. Spahn held the Mets scoreless for 6.2 innings before pinch-hitter Charlie Smith clubbed a two-run homer. Spahn was supported by two home runs by McCovey and one by Mays: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B08270NYN1965.htm
Fourteen years earlier, in 1951, Mays got his first big-league hit, a home run versus Spahn. ‘It’s nicer to have him on your side,” Spahn told Dick Young of the New York Daily News.
This raises some eyebrows into how roommates were assigned. You’d think a distinguished and accomplished veteran like Spahn would have had other friends on the team he’d rather have roomed with in 1964 than a 20-year-old youngster like Wade Blasingame.
Warren Spahn apparently approved of the arrangement because he relished the chance to share his knowledge with a willing student, especially a talented left-hander. As the Tulsa World reported, “He loved teaching youngsters to pitch.”
As luck(bad) would have it, I would have seen Spahn pitch the first ever MLB game I saw in person as a 10 year old kid in 1963. We were on a family vacation, and went to three games, a Saturday affair agains the Braves, and a Sunday double-header against the Cubs. Curt Simmons pitched the game against Milwaukee, but Spahn had pitched that classic 16 inning shutout versus Juan Marichal in his previous start. I have read that it was that long outing in Candlestick that hastened Spahn’s decline.
The Braves decided to have Spahn skip a start, which was the game I was in attendance, and instead started Hank Fischer. Another Hank, Aaron, got the Braves off to a fast start by hitting a three prong-NU bomb in the top of the first. So we barely got into the first game I saw live and the Cardinals are losing 3-0.
Interesting final sentence on the Cardinals acquiring Dan McGinn. He is my cousin, well sort of. He is my cousin’s cousin. Basically I have a first cousin on my dad’s side – her mom was my dad’s sister. Her husband, my cousin’s dad, was Dan McGinn’s uncle. His brother is Dan’s dad. Hopefully you all can follow that! :-)
Lots of fascinating stuff in your comment, Michael. You’re right about why you didn’t get to see Warren Spahn in your first big-league game in person.
Spahn and Juan Marichal had their 16-inning duel on July 2, 1963. A solo home run by Willie Mays against Spahn with one out in the 16th gave the Giants a 1-0 win.
Five days later, on July 7, Spahn pitched a nine-inning shutout against Houston. During that game, “I tried to put too much on a slider to John Bateman,” Spahn told The Sporting News. “Something snapped.”
That’s why Spahn missed his turn and you saw Hank Fischer start for the Braves against the Cardinals on July 13 at St. Louis. It’s pretty special, though, that you got to see Hank Aaron hit a home run in the first inning of the first game you attended. Here is the boxscore: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B07130SLN1963.htm
After hearing something snap in his left arm at Houston on July 7, Spahn didn’t pitch again until July 25 when he faced the Cardinals at Milwaukee. The starting pitcher for the Cardinals was Spahn’s friend and former teammate, Lew Burdette. Burdette and the Cardinals won, 3-1.
It’s fun to know you have that family connection to Dan McGinn. At Notre Dame, he was a punter on the football team and a pitcher for the baseball team. The Cardinals took him in the 21st round of the 1965 baseball draft but he didn’t sign. The next year, he was a first-round choice of the Reds.
McGinn made his major-league debut for the Reds in a relief stint against the Cardinals on Sept. 3, 1968, and was the losing pitcher.
In 1969, McGinn hit the first regular-season home run in Expos history. He did it against Tom Seaver on Opening Day, April 8, at Shea Stadium. McGinn entered the game in relief of Mudcat Grant.
A week later, on April 14, McGinn was the winning pitcher against the Cardinals in the Expos’ first home game in Montreal. McGinn pitched 5.1 scoreless innings that day in relief of ex-Cardinal Larry Jaster.
His stint with the 1973 Tulsa team was his last as a professional pitcher.
Great additions to my comments! That first live MLB game for me is still in my memory, as I have mental pictures of a lot of that game and time. I still have some momento’s my parents got me at the stadium, including a now beat-up navy blue Cardinals cap, that I wore all the time as a kid. Also one of those pennants that has a team picture in it, and is still displayed to this day in my home office. Plus the 1963 Cardinals yearbook showing Stan the Man stealing a base.
As for Dan McGinn, he did indeed go to Notre Dame. My dad always said he wanted to go to Nebraska, but Dan’s dad swayed him to go to Notre Dame with all of the tradition, plus the prestige it would bring him. At a family wedding one time I asked him about that home run off Tom Seaver, and he said it was one of his biggest thrills, and said “You don’t forget those things.”
Thank you for sharing these delightful first-hand insights.
Speaking of the 1968 Tulsa team, those were the days when it was not unusual for guys to play in the minors both early and late in their careers. That Tulsa club had veterans including Elio Chacon, Pedro Gonzalez, Stu Miller and Gary Geiger.
The team I really liked was their 1966 club. Chacon was on that team as well, along with Alex Johnson, Bobby Tolan, Steve Carlton, and Walt “No Neck” Williams. Another powerhouse AAA team in the Cardinals organization.
You know your baseball, Michael. Those are a lot of fun names. I’d pay to watch those guys play in the minors.
5-foot-6 Walt “No Neck” Williams was amazing. He played 2 seasons for the Cardinals’ Tulsa team _ 1965 when they were a Class AA club managed by Vern Rapp and 1966 when they they were in Class AAA for the first time and managed by Charlie Metro _ and he hit .330 each season.
Asked about the 1966 team in a 1981 interview with the Tulsa World, Williams said, “That year was one of the high moments of my career. The thing I remember about that 1966 team was that we had six or seven guys hitting over .300 but nobody was envious of the other. It was just a fun season.”
When the big-league Cardinals played the Tulsa Oilers in an exhibition game on May 5, 1966, at Tulsa, it drew a crowd of 18,904.
The 1966 Tulsa Oilers won the Pacific Coast League East Division title, then lost to manager Bob Lemon’s West Division Seattle Angels in a thrilling PCL championship series. Years later, Charlie Metro told the Tulsa World, “That season in Tulsa was the most delightful and happiest of my baseball life.”
Because Spahn did some pitching for that Tulsa team in 1967, it delayed his entry into the Hall of Fame. He should have gone in with the class of 1971, but had to wait till 1973.
Yes, indeed. “I’d have waited 10 years,” Warren Spahn told United Press International. “I have no regrets.”
Spahn was only the sixth player elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America on the first try. According to UPI, the others were Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Bob Feller and Sandy Koufax.
There’s nothing sadder than a pitcher who refuses to “hang ’em up” and bounces from desperate team to desperate team. Baseball sure can be a metaphor for some of the crappier things in life.
I’m re-reading a collection of 1980s baseball stories by Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post. Your comment prompts me to share a passage from the book. It is as relevant now as it was in the 1980s, perhaps even more so, and I thought you would appreciate both the message and the writing:
“If baseball in the 1980s, with its bewildering succession of one-season wonders and dethroned champions, has taught us one distinction, it’s the difference between success and excellence. Many in sports think they are the same. They’re not. There’s no substitute for excellence _ not even success.
“Success is tricky, perishable and often outside our control; the pursuit of success makes a poor cornerstone, especially for a whole personality. Excellence is dependable, lasting and largely an issue within our own control; pursuit of excellence, in and for itself, is the best of foundations. If the distinction between success and excellence were easy to grasp, we wouldn’t have found so many players, managers and teams in disarray in the eighties _ particularly in baseball, but in all sports actually.
“Whenever bad news hits the sports page, look for a success story gone wrong.’
Those were the days when the Mets specialized in signing heroes of another era. Didn’t work out that well for them.
So true, Ken. The list included included Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Gus Bell, Gene Woodling, Vinegar Bend Mizell and Clem Labine, to name just a few.
For all the old Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants fans it was fun. Beat having to watch the Yankees.