As a rookie with the reigning National League champion Giants in 1963, Jim Ray Hart learned the hard way that facing the Cardinals could be a pain.
On his first day playing in the majors, Hart suffered a fractured left collarbone when struck by a Bob Gibson pitch.
A month later, when he returned to the lineup, Hart was hit in the head by a pitch from the Cardinals’ Curt Simmons, ending his season.
Early times
Hart hailed from Hookerton, a town of about 500 residents, 40 miles from the nearest interstate, in eastern North Carolina. At 15, he began drinking corn whiskey, and his hankering for the homemade hooch led to heavier drinking later on, Hart told the Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat.
When he was 18, Hart signed with the Giants and entered their farm system. In 1961, he played shortstop but made 42 errors in 77 games. He did less damage at third base and in the outfield, and settled into those spots.
Hart’s hitting was what made him special. A right-handed slugger, he had a .421 on-base percentage and 123 RBI for Fresno in 1961, and a .403 on-base percentage and 107 RBI for Springfield (Massachusetts) in 1962.
After producing 99 hits in 83 games for Tacoma in 1963, Hart, 21, was called up to the Giants in July.
Hard lessons
Hart made his Giants debut in the first game of a July 7 doubleheader against the Cardinals at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. His first big-league hits in that game were singles against Bobby Shantz and Lew Burdette. Hart also walked twice, scored a run and drove in one, helping the Giants to a 4-3 victory in 15 innings. Boxscore
Between games, Willie Mays reminded Hart that Bob Gibson was starting Game 2. In the book “Stranger to the Game,” Hart recalled, “I only half-listened to what he was saying, figuring it didn’t make much difference.”
Hart faced Gibson for the first time in the second inning. Gibson’s velocity that Sunday afternoon was exceptional. Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Gibson was so fast, I didn’t think my hands would hold out.”
In the book “Sixty Feet, Six Inches,” Gibson said the word on Hart was to pitch him inside because “he was a guy who’d kill you if you got the ball away from him. I was making sure he wasn’t going to kill me.”
In the batter’s box, “I started digging a little hole with my back foot to get a firm stance as I usually did,” Hart said in “Stranger to the Game.” “No sooner did I start digging that hole than I hear Willie (Mays) screaming from the dugout, ‘Nooooo!’ I should have listened to Willie.”
Gibson’s first pitch to Hart was tight. “He had a closed stance, with his left foot nearly on home plate, and was unable to move quickly enough to avoid an inside pitch, which I was obligated to throw as long as he cheated toward the outside corner,” Gibson said in “Stranger to the Game.”
Hart dug in again for the next pitch, a fastball up and in, and it struck him with such force that “there was a loud crack,” he said in “Stranger to the Game.”
Hart collapsed in agony. Taken to a hospital, he was found to have “a clavicle fracture about the size and roundness of a baseball,” the San Francisco Examiner reported. (Sixteen years later, in 1979, Hart told the Oakland Tribune, “I still can feel a small pain in my shoulder sometimes from that.”)
Gibson said his pitch was intended to move Hart away from the plate, not hit him. When informed Hart had a fractured bone, Gibson replied to the Examiner, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what I can do about it. I know I wasn’t throwing at him.”
Hart told the newspaper, “I don’t think he was trying to throw at me, but I don’t know. He says he was pitching me tight … I wasn’t fooled on the pitch. It was just that it was in back of me … I just didn’t have a chance to avoid that pitch.”
The Giants were irate _ “It’s a terrible thing to have happen to him on his first day,” manager Al Dark told the Examiner. “It’s a disgrace” _ and retaliated.
When Gibson batted in the third, Juan Marichal “threw a fastball at Gibson’s head that dumped him into the dirt and almost uncoupled him,” the Examiner reported.
Plate umpire Al Barlick rushed toward the mound, shook a finger at Marichal and warned him not to do that again.
“I think Marichal was throwing at me,” Gibson said to the Oakland Tribune. “If I had been throwing at the kid (Hart), it would have been justified. I wasn’t.”
In “Stranger to the Game,” Gibson said, “There was a big difference between throwing at a guy and brushing him back. The brushback pitch is a lot like the spitball in the sense that its effectiveness lies largely in the awareness it places in the batter’s mind.”
Stan Musial, 42, broke up the scoreless duel in the seventh with a two-run home run against Marichal. In the ninth, Gibson laced a two-run single versus reliever Jim Duffalo. Gibson pitched a six-hit shutout and the Cardinals won, 5-0. Boxscore
Down and out
Hart returned to the lineup on Aug. 12. Four nights later, with the Cardinals ahead, 13-0, in the ninth inning at St. Louis, he faced Curt Simmons and was struck on the left temple by an 0-and-2 fastball. “The ball hit the lower part of the helmet and Hart’s head,” the Examiner reported.
Simmons told the newspaper, “He never backed away. He seemed to freeze and stand right there.”
Hart slumped to the ground and was carried on a stretcher to the clubhouse. Cardinals manager Johnny Keane, who as a minor-leaguer suffered a fractured skull when clunked in the head by a pitch, went to the Giants’ clubhouse and stayed until an ambulance came, according to the Oakland Tribune.
Hart was diagnosed with a concussion. At the hospital, he “was speaking coherently” and was given permission to eat and smoke, Cardinals physician Dr. I.C. Middleman told the Examiner. Boxscore
Back in San Francisco, Hart complained of dizziness, headaches and blurred vision. He was examined by a neurosurgeon and shut down for the season.
Take that!
A year later, Hart tagged Gibson and Simmons with home runs.
On Aug. 10, 1964, Hart hit “a majestic home run over the scoreboard in left” at St. Louis against Gibson, the Oakland Tribune reported. “It was estimated the ball traveled around 500 feet. It cleared the scoreboard, which is 60 feet high at that particular spot, 408 feet from the plate.”
The ball landed on Sullivan Avenue. Boxscore
Two weeks later, at Candlestick Park, Hart hammered a two-run homer versus Simmons. Boxscore
Hart finished the 1964 season with 31 home runs. In 1965, he led the Giants in hits (177) and doubles (30) and batted .329 against the Cardinals. Hart made the National League all-star team in 1966, belting 33 homers and leading the Giants in hits (165) again.
The 1967 season may have been Hart’s best. He was the Giants leader in runs scored (98), hits (167), doubles (26), triples (seven), RBI (99), walks (77) and total bases (294). On June 29, 1967, Hart had four RBI on a single and a home run in the opening inning against Gibson.
Troubled times
Too many injuries, too much weight gain and too much drinking contributed to Hart’s decline.
He tore muscles in his right shoulder while making a throw from the outfield and was hit in the head again by a pitch from the Reds’ Wayne Simpson. Struck by pitches 28 times in the majors, Hart was called “Mr. Dent” by his teammates, United Press International reported.
On Oct. 30, 1968, a car driven by Hart struck and killed a woman in Daly City, Calif. Dorothy Selmi, 62, wife of former Daly City mayor Paul Selmi, was hit as she was crossing Mission Street at Como Avenue, the Examiner reported. Hart was questioned by police and released.
In April 1969, Hart crashed against the fence at Candlestick Park while chasing a Pete Rose drive and bashed his right shoulder. He was limited to 236 at-bats that season. “When I hit the ball, the pain goes from a nerve in my back, high on the shoulder, and winds up in my elbow,” Hart told the Examiner.
Hart batted .304 as a pinch-hitter in 1969. A highlight came on July 26 when he slugged a two-run homer in the ninth inning against Joe Hoerner to beat the Cardinals. Boxscore
During his playing days, Hart drank a lot. His preference was I.W. Harper whiskey. “A quart a day,” he said to Bob Padecky of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Hart told Padecky that Giants manager Herman Franks offered him money to stop drinking, but he couldn’t.
“I think I could have played longer in the big leagues if I hadn’t done as much drinking,” Hart said to Pat Frizzell of the Oakland Tribune.
In April 1973, the Giants sent Hart to the Yankees and he finished his playing days with them in 1974, totaling 1,052 career hits.
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Another great post Mark of a player I had never heard of. I like how you put that – “Hankering for the homemade hooch” though it’s unfortunate that too much drinking, according to his own estimation, impacted his career for the negative which was pretty damn good anyway.
It’s hard to believe that players once didn’t wear batting helmets and in Jim Ray’s day I assume they didn’t have the protective ear flaps either. Nowadays players come to the plate with elbow and ankle protective pads which seem necessary in that so many pitchers throw 100 mph or more.
I like how Gibson compared the brush back to the spit ball in that both pitches are effective not so much because of the actual pitch, but because it plants the possibility in a batter’s mind. It seems to me that umpires are too quick to warn pitchers and/or eject them from the game.
Kind of of topic, but it’s the same with rules that penalize runners from breaking up double plays and catchers from blocking the plate. I’m not sure where I stand on that. On the one hand, it protects them from serious injury, but it seems to take away not only an exciting aspect of the game, but the physical courage to hang in there and endure a collision.
According to the Society for American Baseball Research, Jim Ray Hart’s father was a bootlegger as well as a sharecropper and that’s how the teen got introduced to booze.
I agree with you, Steve, that Bob Gibson articulated clearly the difference between a brushback and a pitch intended to hit a batter, and why the brushback is an essential part of a pitcher’s arsenal. By taking away the brushback pitch, those who run the game are trying to artificially pump up the offense in order to generate the excitement they believe will enhance the chances of more fans spending money on the sport.
I guess that was the reasoning behind the lowering of the mound in Gibson’s time as well as the DH and all other changes past and present.
Yes, indeed. As Bob Gibson noted in his 1994 book, Stranger to the Game: “The rancor between the pitcher and the hitter, which characterized the game in my time, has been legislated out in favor of a kinder, gentler game in which there is more cheap offense for the paying customer.”
The top three National League 1964 rookies packed a lot of punch. No one-year wonders: Dick Allen, Rico Carty and Jim Hart.
You make a good point.
In 1962, Jim Ray Hart and Dick Allen both played in the Eastern League and produced similar numbers. With Springfield, Hart had 18 homers, 107 RBI, batted .337 and had a .403 on-base percentage. With Williamsport, Allen had 20 homers, 109 RBI, batted .329 and had a .409 on-base percentage.
In 1964, Allen won the National League Rookie of the Year Award, getting 18 of 20 votes. Hart and Rico Carty got one vote each.
With the 1964 Phillies, Allen scored 125 runs and had 201 hits, 38 doubles, 13 triples, 29 homers, 91 RBI, batted .318 and had a .382 on-base mark.
With the 1964 Giants, Hart had 31 homers, 81 RBI, batted .286 and had a .342 on-base mark.
With the 1964 Braves, Carty had 22 homers, 88 RBI, batted .330 and had a .388 on-base mark.
It’s interesting you guys bring up Richie (later Dick) Allen, as I always thought of Hart and Allen as essentially the same player. Both struggled defensively, but got by playing third base and left field. Both had exceptional power, but seemed to not necessarily devote themselves 100% to their craft.
Back in 2005 I had the good fortune to meet George Altman and chat with him for quite awhile. We talked about a lot of the players from that time and George told me that Hart was a terrific talent, but off the field he was not disciplined. Obviously the booze compromised his career.
And as a side note, I love that ’65 Topps card of Hart. That is my all-time favorite Topps set, and the set I had the most of as a kid. I later finished the set in the ’80s when I got back in to collecting as an adult.
On May 19, 1964, at Candlestick Park, the third basemen were Dick Allen for the Phillies and Jim Ray Hart for the Giants. Hart had his first 4-hit game in the majors. Facing Dennis Bennett, Hart was 4-for-4 with a RBI and a run scored in the Giants’ 3-0 victory. Allen was held hitless in four at-bats against Jack Sanford. https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05190SFN1964.htm
I appreciate that 1965 Topps set, too, and that the cards are tailored for kids. The use of purple for the cards of the orange-and-black-clad Giants somehow worked just fine in the eyes of kids. I also liked the cartoons on the backs on those cards. On the 1965 Hart card, it notes that he hit .418 versus the Braves in 1964. The cartoon shows a Milwaukee Brave being battered by a barrage of baseballs.
Too bad that the injuries, weight problems and drinking kept him from achieving his full potential. He put up some great numbers from 1964 to 1968. His 31 homeruns in 1964 is still a San Francisco Giants record for a rookie. I don’t know if there’s any truth to this but I once read that one of the reasons why he was soft spoken and somewhat of a loner was because of a speech empediment. By chance I came across a 25 second video on YouTube where he suffers the fractured collarbone on the pitch by Bob Gibson. It’s pretty scary.
Phillip: Thank you for finding the You Tube video of Jim Ray Hart getting struck by the Bob Gibson pitch. I am including the link here so that others may see it if they wish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8COgmnqoTc
I also appreciate your information about Hart holding the San Francisco Giants rookie record for home runs, with 31 in 1964. Impressive. For comparison sake, Willie Mays had 20 homers as a New York Giants rookie in 1951, and the homer totals for some prominent San Francisco Giants rookies included 25 for Orlando Cepeda in 1958, 13 for Willie McCovey in 1959, 9 for Bobby Bonds in 1968, 11 for Will Clark in 1986, and 8 for Matt Williams in 1987.
I once sttended a game in which both Jim Ray Hart and Richie Allen featured, and the HOF-bound starting pitchers were both gone after 3 innings.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B04270SFN1965.htm
Quite an amazing slugfest to witness.
Jim Ray Hart had three career hits versus Art Mahaffey _ the two-run triple you witnessed and two home runs.
Curious that Hart was not in the starting lineup against Jim Bunning, because Hart ended up with more career home runs versus Bunning (six) than he did against any other pitcher.
Matty Alou had three career walkoff home runs in the big leagues. The one you saw was the last. The others occurred Aug. 9, 1961, versus Barney Schultz of the Cubs and Sept. 29, 1964, versus Claude Raymond of Houston.