Pitcher Nelson Chittum never spent a full season in the majors, but during his time there he mingled with the sport’s aristocracy. For example:
_ In his big-league debut with the Cardinals, he got a start against the Dodgers and was opposed by Sandy Koufax.
_ In parts of three seasons in the majors, Chittum was a teammate of Stan Musial and Ted Williams. Chittum and Musial were road roommates for a while with the Cardinals. Then, with the Red Sox, Williams delivered a hit that helped set up Chittum to earn his first win.
_ In his best game as a Cardinal, Chittum struck out a pair of future Hall of Famers, Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski.
In 40 big-league appearances, Chittum was 3-1 with a 3.84 ERA. Most of his professional career was spent as a starter in the minors.
Pitching prospect
Chittum moved with his family from Harrisonburg, Va., to Elizabethtown, Pa., about 20 miles from the state capital of Harrisburg, as a youth.
A right-handed pitcher, he threw two perfect games in high school. After he graduated in 1951, Chittum was approached by the Cardinals but opted instead to attend Elizabethtown College, according to the Elizabethtown Chronicle.
After two seasons of college baseball for coach Ira R. Herr, Chittum, 20, was signed by Cardinals scout Fred “Dutch” Dorman in October 1953. A week later, he was inducted into the U.S. Army and served for two years.
At 23, Chittum made his professional debut with the Cardinals’ Fresno farm club in the California League in 1956. A lanky sinkerball specialist, Chittum posted a 23-7 record in the regular season and pitched 266 innings. He earned three more wins in the playoffs, giving him a total of 26 for the year.
Promoted to the Cardinals’ Houston farm club, managed by Harry Walker, in 1957, Chittum was 16-12, developing a slider taught to him by pitching instructor Johnny Grodzicki.
“Nels is a low ball pitcher,” Houston general manager Art Routzong said to United Press. “He’s real tough and he’s got marvelous control until he lets loose with a high one. He’s hard to hit, real hard, when he keeps that ball down.”
Houston catcher Ray Dabek told the wire service, “You ought to get behind the screen and watch his ball move. He’s really got something on it. He has a good fastball that sort of sinks, and a good slider. Real good.”
Big-league debut
After compiling a 12-8 record and 2.84 ERA for manager Johnny Keane’s Omaha farm team in 1958, Chittum, 25, was called up to the Cardinals in August that year and given a start against Koufax and the Dodgers at Los Angeles.
Koufax, 22, was not yet the dominant ace he would become later with the Dodgers. He entered the start with a season record of 9-5 and a 4.19 ERA.
The first two Cardinals batters of the game, Curt Flood and Gene Freese, hit home runs against Koufax. The Cardinals totaled four runs in the inning.
Staked to the 4-0 lead, Chittum held the Dodgers scoreless in the first two innings. Koufax was taken out in the second.
The Cardinals made it 5-0 when Chittum got his first big-league hit, a single against Babe Birrer that scored catcher Gene Green from second.
Chittum, however, was unable to hold down the Dodgers, in part, because of poor fielding by his teammates. With two outs in the third, the Dodgers scored on a Gil Hodges bloop single “which Freese lost in the sun and which should, instead, have been taken in short left by Del Ennis,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. A Chittum balk brought in the Dodgers’ second run of the inning, cutting the St. Louis lead to 5-2.
In the fourth, the Cardinals scored three times, extending the lead to 8-2, but the Dodgers knocked out Chittum before he could retire a batter in the bottom half of the inning. Ken Boyer let a Charlie Neal grounder go over his shoulder for a fluke single. Two more singles followed, loading the bases. Carl Furillo, batting for reliever Fred Kipp, then doubled, driving in all three runners and making the score 8-5. After Jim Gilliam bunted for a single, Jim Brosnan relieved Chittum.
Brosnan limited the Dodgers to one run in six innings and got the win. Boxscore
St. Louis shakeup
Chittum next made two relief appearances for the Cardinals. The best of those outings was when he pitched 4.1 scoreless innings against the Pirates, including strikeouts of Clemente and Mazeroski. Boxscore
Three nights later, in the series finale versus the Pirates, Chittum started. He gave up three runs (a Dick Stuart solo home run and a two-run shot by Bob Skinner) in three innings and was the losing pitcher. Boxscore
Chittum pitched in nine more games, all in relief, for the 1958 Cardinals. According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, the quiet rookie roomed with Musial on a couple of road trips.
With 10 games remaining, Cardinals general manager Bing Devine, on orders from club owner Gussie Busch, fired manager Fred Hutchinson.
A month later, with new manager Solly Hemus, the Cardinals traveled to Japan for a goodwill tour. Chittum opted not to go because he had committed to playing winter baseball in the Dominican Republic. “Maybe I missed my chance to impress (Hemus) in Japan,” Chittum told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “but I know I didn’t stand much chance in the St. Louis organization.”
Moving on
At 1959 spring training, Cardinals pitcher Sal Maglie (who would become an instructor that season) said Chittum needed to develop a better curve to stay in the majors, the Elizabethtown Chronicle reported. Then, on March 15, 1959, Chittum was traded to the Red Sox for pitcher Dean Stone.
The Red Sox assigned Chittum to their farm team at Minneapolis, managed by Gene Mauch, who told the Star Tribune. “Nels … was one of the best right-handers in our league last year (with Omaha). He beat the top clubs.” One of those wins was a shutout against Minneapolis and Stone.
Red Sox farm director Johnny Murphy, a former Yankees reliever, noticed a flaw in Chittum’s delivery and worked with him to correct it. “When I let the ball go, it was traveling up instead of down, and it was taking all my stuff off,” Chittum told the Elizabethtown Chronicle. “John changed my motion so that now when I release the ball it travels in a downward arc.”
Chittum was 11-5 for Minneapolis when the Red Sox called him up for the last two months of the 1959 season.
On Aug. 28, 1959, the Orioles led the Red Sox, 4-2, in the seventh when Ted Williams, batting for catcher Sammy White, doubled, scoring Frank Malzone from second and getting Boston within a run at 4-3. Chittum entered in the eighth, pitched three scoreless innings and got the win, his first in the majors, when the Red Sox rallied. Boxscore
In September, Chittum got two more wins, beating the Indians and Senators. He finished 3-0 with a 1.19 ERA for the 1959 Red Sox. Chittum allowed earned runs in just two of 21 appearances and no one hit a home run against him.
No vacancies
Sal Maglie replaced Boo Ferriss as Red Sox pitching coach in 1960.
On April 6, on their way from spring training in St. Petersburg, Fla., to San Francisco to open the 1960 season at the new Candlestick Park, the Cardinals stopped in Scottsdale, Ariz., for an exhibition game against the Red Sox. Chittum, in relief of Bill Monbouquette, pitched 1.2 innings against his former team and gave up one run. Ted Williams had two singles in three at-bats but was upstaged by Stan Musial, whose three-run home run versus Ted Bowsfield in the eighth carried the Cardinals to a 13-10 victory.
(Asked on a 1962 questionnaire to name his biggest thrill in baseball, Chittum answered, “It has to be being teammates with two of the all-time great players _ Stan Musial and Ted Williams,” the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported.)
Chittum began the 1960 season with the Red Sox but on May 6 was traded to the Dodgers for Rip Repulski, the former Cardinal, and assigned to the minors. (In his first at-bat for the Red Sox, Repulski hit a grand slam. Boxscore)
Chittum never returned to the majors. In 1961, he was “packed and almost out the door” on his way to the Angels, an American League expansion club, but at the last moment the Dodgers reconsidered, the Elizabethtown Chronicle reported.
After pitching his last season for Rochester in 1964, Chittum managed a men’s clothing store and then became a U.S. postal inspector.
In February 1965, baseball innovator Bill Veeck told a banquet audience in Lancaster, Pa., he wanted to see interleague play, the elimination of the intentional walk, and a designated hitter for the pitcher.
Asked his opinion of a designated hitter, Chittum told the Lancaster New Era, “That’s a bunch of baloney … That would take the fun out of it. It’d be like telling some guys on a basketball team they had to play defense and couldn’t shoot.”
RetroSimba 
Great research Mark to come up with all the highlights of a pitcher who, as you mentioned, never played a full season in the majors. Too bad he didn’t get a chance to play on that 59 Cardinals team, he may have been mentioned in Brosnan’s LONG SEASON.
Wow…..It turns out that Bill Veeck’s wishes all came true with regards to DH, no intentional walk, and interleague play. I agree with Chittum and love his analogy to basketball regarding the DH.
I’m glad you appreciate a story about such an unheralded player, Steve. I find these are sometimes as compelling as ones about the more prominent players. It is such a fine line between the highest level of the minors and the majors.
I’m also glad you got it regarding how advanced Bill Veeck was in advocating for the changes that many years later took place in baseball. It reminds me how Veeck was a lot savvier than most of his peers, and it shows me just how long it takes before baseball finally does act to make some of its changes.
There are various used book fairs here in Montreal, one of them at a local university and a few years ago I found Veeck as in Wreck for like 2 or 3 bucks. I read it right away, but remember very little, other than him being someone not afraid to suggest new ideas and god I need those as I get older! I think I’ll read it again.
Once again Stan Musial is a class act. That one of the greatest players the game has ever had would be willing to room with an unknown rookie says it all. I can’t help but wonder if Nelson Chittum’s stay in St.Louis would have been longer if he had traveled with the team to Japan. Still though, it’s always great to see a young professional athlete with enough humility and common sense to see that his life long work won’t be on ball field but in the real world.
You make many good points, Phillip. I, too, was impressed that Stan Musial, an established superstar, would room with a rookie, or even room with anyone at all.
You’re right about Nelson Chittum having the good sense to move on from baseball. With a wife and son to support, Chittum, 32, explained to the Rochester Democrat-Chronicle why he turned down a chance to come back for another minor-league season in 1965: “It’s a difficult decision to make,” he said. “I don’t want to leave baseball, but it’s getting to be that time of life when I have to think about my family and the future.”
Mark,
As always, a really cool post about an under-the-radar Cardinal.
I’ve long thought it would be The Most Fun to comprise a “one game only” Cardinals roster.
This would include starting lineups plus “realistic” benches and pitching staffs.
Meaning: backups who played those roles realistically on actual Cardinals teams; therefore, Dick Schofield and Tito Landrum would be realistic candidates for this roster, but Edgar Renteria as a reserve SS and Ray Lankford as a reserve OF would not be. Such a bullpen could in no way include Bruce Sutter AND Lee Arthur Smith AND Dennis Eckersley — all HOF closers — because ballclubs have a most a #1 and maybe #1A closer.
Lastly: There are so many different Cardinals eras for which such a roster could be created: a Whitey Era or a Tony Era or a Red Era or even a Billy Southworth Era.
But again, working on this would be, I think, The Most Fun!
What a wonderfully creative idea you propose for a one-game only Cardinals roster, with realistic roles, so that the No. 10 pitcher on the staff, for instance, would have to be someone who really did perform that function, such as a Nelson Chittum or perhaps a Jack Lamabe, for instance. It would be a good test of a Cardinals fan’s knowledge.
He and I share the same opinion about the DH.
Yep, just one more spot in the batting order for a guy to swing from the heels and strike out.
You research is impeccable, Mark. I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass because I “know” you, but this blog is hands down one of the most important historical documents on the game today. MLB should take notice.
Thanks, Gary. Like you, I enjoy the craft of storytelling in word form. And please keep that smoke to yourself. :)