May was indeed a merry month for Denny Lemaster when he pitched against the Cardinals. A left-hander, Lemaster hurled four shutouts versus the Cardinals, and all occurred in May during the 1960s.
In 11 seasons in the majors with the Braves (1962-67), Astros (1968-71) and Expos (1972), Lemaster was on the cusp of becoming an ace until injuries set him back. His record was 90-105, including 15-13 versus the Cardinals.
Lemaster experienced multiple family tragedies during his life: his sister drowned in a cesspool; his father died in a car crash; his wife also was killed in an auto accident.
Cesspool cave-in
Lemaster resided with his parents and younger sister in Camarillo, Calif., 50 miles north of Los Angeles. Denny’s father, Cyrus, milked cows for Adohr Farms and the family was housed in a residence court leased by the dairy for its workers.
On June 24, 1951, Denny’s sister, Lana, 8, and a playmate, Peggy Ziese, were skipping across the yard of the residence court when “the earth opened up beneath them,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Rotten timbers covering a cesspool had given way and Lana fell in, the Associated Press reported. “Lana fell from sight through a hole about three feet in diameter,” the Times reported.
According to the Los Angeles Daily News, her friend Peggy “lost her footing but scrambled to safety” and screamed for help.
Two neighbors, Fred Luddenburg and Charles Simmons, were the first on the scene. According to the Camarillo Star, Lana’s father, Cyrus, soon joined them. The men lowered a garden hose to Lana.
“She grasped it and was nearly free of water when rotted timber gave way and struck her, causing her to lose her grip,” the Daily News reported. “Lana disappeared under an avalanche of dirt,” according to the Associated Press.
Her brother Denny, 12, had run to a fire station three blocks away for help, but rescuers arrived too late. “The rescue squad laid planks across the opening and lowered a ladder into the pit,” the Times reported. “Russell Griffin climbed down the ladder and carried Lana’s body to the surface.” Attempts to resuscitate failed.
Twenty minutes after she first fell, Lana was dead, drowned in the cesspool.
“Because of the tragic death of little Lana Lemaster, many local residents are advocating the immediate installation of a central sewage system,” the Camarillo Star reported.
(The Lemasters never considered a lawsuit. “We were poor, uneducated people,” Denny told the Times in 2021. “If that happened today, we’d have owned Adohr Farms.”)
Fatal accident
Three years later, on Dec. 3, 1954, Denny’s father, Cyrus, 44, died after his pickup truck skidded on a rain-slick road in Camarillo and slammed into a power pole, deputy coroner Virgil Payton said to the Oxnard Press-Courier.
A passing motorist stopped and found Cyrus in the pickup truck, bleeding badly. An ambulance was called to the scene, but Cyrus “had to be transferred to another ambulance when the first broke down (on its way) to the hospital,” the Ventura County Star reported. Cyrus was dead on arrival.
Pitching in
Without a father to support he and his mother, Denny worked 40 hours a week at a gas station while attending Oxnard High School, the Oxnard Press-Courier reported. He earned extra income from a second job with a lumber company.
When he wasn’t working or attending classes, Lemaster played high school baseball. He was a first baseman as a freshman and sophomore, then turned to pitching his junior and senior years.
As a senior in 1958, Lemaster had a stretch of 53 consecutive scoreless innings. He struck out 251 in 123 innings. Johnny Moore, West Coast scout for the reigning World Series champion Milwaukee Braves, signed Lemaster for $60,000 in June 1958. Moore previously signed Eddie Mathews and Del Crandall for the Braves.
(One of Lemaster’s prep teammates, Ken McMullen, signed with the Dodgers in 1960 and went on to play 16 seasons in the majors as a third baseman.)
Reaching the top
In 1962, his fifth season in the minors, Lemaster was 10-4 for Louisville when he got called to the Braves in July. Their ace left-hander, Warren Spahn, helped him adapt to the big leagues, showing him an effective pickoff move to first and how to add off-speed pitches to his mix.
“At Louisville, I could rear back and just throw it by some hitters,” Lemaster told the Ventura County Star, “but you can’t get away with that in the big leagues.”
In 1963, his first full season in the majors, Lemaster was 11-14, but the Braves were shut out in seven of those defeats and he lost another by a 2-1 score.
The next year, Lemaster had his best record _ 17-11 for the 1964 Braves. On May 24, he shut out the Cardinals for the first time, a three-hitter at Milwaukee. Boxscore
When he got to spring training in 1965, Lemaster’s shoulder ached. “Figuring he could work the stiffness out, he continued to pitch,” Newspaper Enterprise Association reported. “The pain increased. By July, the pain in his shoulder was as bad as his pitching record.” He finished the season with a 7-13 mark.
“I had torn tendons and there was nothing to do but rest,” Lemaster told reporter Sandy Padwe. “I was taking ultrasound and cobalt treatments and they were shooting my shoulder with cortisone. Finally, the shoulder began to respond and I could throw normally again.”
Pitching instead of throwing
In May 1966, the Cardinals moved into Busch Memorial Stadium in downtown St. Louis and defeated the Braves twice in their first two games there. The first pitcher to beat the Cardinals in their new home was Lemaster. He did it with a four-hit shutout and also drove in a run against Bob Gibson.
“Tonight I had to be a pitcher,” Lemaster told the Atlanta Journal. “I had to make a guy pop the ball up on a 3-1 pitch. I got another one to pop up on a 3-2 pitch and I got one to ground out on a 3-1 pitch. There’s a fine point between a good game like that and a bad game sometimes. If you make a little mistake in those situations, 3-1, 3-2, you can be in real trouble.
“So that’s why I get more satisfaction out of a game like (this) one. I made the pitches I had to when I had to make them.” Boxscore
With an 11-8 season record, Lemaster was warming up for an August 1966 start at San Francisco “when I felt something snap in my arm below the elbow,” he told Newspaper Enterprise Association. He pitched four innings, couldn’t straighten his arm and was shut down for the season.
Right stuff
The Cardinals were on their way to becoming World Series champions in 1967, but Lemaster was not intimidated. On May 24 in Atlanta, he pitched a one-hitter against them and won, 2-0.
“Just as soon as I started warming up, my fastball was going boom, boom, boom, right over the plate and I knew that I had it,” Lemaster told the Associated Press.
Catcher Joe Torre said to the Atlanta Constitution, “His fastball was as good as I ever saw it.”
The Cardinals’ lone hit was Lou Brock’s one-out single in the third, a low liner to center. “It almost tore my head off,” Lemaster said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Bob Gibson pitched a three-hitter for the Cardinals. One of those hits was Felipe Alou’s two-run home run in the fifth. More upsetting to Gibson, though, was what preceded the home run. With two outs and none on, Gibson issued a walk to Woody Woodward, who entered the game with a .197 batting average and had a career mark of .100 (3-for-30) versus Gibson.
“I should have thrown the ball right down the middle to Woodward,” Gibson said to the Post-Dispatch. Boxscore
More tragedy
After the 1967 season, Lemaster and infielder Denis Menke were dealt to the Astros for infielder Sonny Jackson and first baseman Chuck Harrison.
Lemaster shut out the Cardinals for the final time on May 2, 1968, a three-hitter at Houston. Lemaster had a 2.81 ERA for the 1968 Astros but a 10-15 record. Boxscore
He was moved fulltime to the bullpen by Astros manager Harry Walker in 1971 and finished his pitching career as a reliever with the 1972 Expos.
Lemaster became a custom home builder in Georgia, where he resided with his wife, Earlene, and their four children.
In October 1978, Earlene, 40, was killed and a daughter, Kim, 14, was injured in a traffic accident in Decatur, Ga. Earlene was driving her daughter home from school when she apparently ran a stop sign, a DeKalb County police official told the Atlanta Constitution. A truck slammed into the Cadillac and Earlene and her daughter were pinned in the wreckage for at least 30 minutes before rescuers could free them. The 20-year-old driver of the truck was not seriously injured and was not charged, police said.
Lemaster remarried in 1983. He was a master woodcarver, whose specialty was duck decoys.
RetroSimba 
As always, the research into this post Mark is fascinating. I like it when you include high school statistics. It’s rare to hear of a player or pitcher that struggled in high school and only later during their career thrived like Michael Jordan once being cut from his varsity basketball team.
What a life, just one loss after another. That cesspool death of his sister is horrifying. I can’t imagine that panicked run to the fire station. Kudos to his ability to move on and have a damn good career. I love it that you profile players that don’t get much attention, but were oh so close to being recognized by the mainstream.
Interesting that his baseball card say Denver for his first name rather than Denny, but according to wikipedia Denver was first name. I wonder if he ever visited the city? If my man was Boise, I think I’d go to boise, Idaho for the fun of it.
Thanks, Steve. Denny Lemaster had an amazing senior season of high school baseball in 1958. He pitched three no-hitters, including a perfect game.
An unusual play occurred in Lemaster’s major-league debut in a start against the Reds at Milwaukee. In the sixth inning, the Braves’ Frank Bolling hit a drive to the right of the 360-foot mark in left-center at County Stadium. The ball went into the stands but Bolling was ruled out because of fan interference. According to the Associated Press, a boy about 8 years old (might that have been you, Steve?) had his cap hanging over the playing field. The ball landed in the cap as outfielder Wally Post made his leap. Post reached for it and the ball plopped into the stands. An 11-year-old, Gary Murray of Beloit, grabbed it and tucked it under his arm to keep it away from Post. https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B07152MLN1962.htm
Hilarious. Thanks for sharing that great story and the retrosheet. Bolling must have been a tad upset as well as Lemaster and the Braves in that they lost 3-2. It’s interesting that in the description below the box score, there is no mention of the interference, just that Bolling flied out to left. I see that Jim Brosnan got the win for the Reds. The only reason I know the name Frank Bolling is because he hit a grand slam off Koufax in I think the last Braves game ever played at Country Stadium.
Topps always referred to him as “Denver.” For some reason, there were some players they insisted on calling something other than what everyone else did. Remember “Bob” Clemente?
I’m a little young to remember Clemente, but I’ve read that it bothered him that they referred to him as Bob rather than Roberto like they were erasing his culture or something.
His full name was Denver Clayton Lemaster. Based on multiple newspaper articles, Denver and Denny were used interchangeably, with no apparent preference. In answer to your question, Steve, Lemaster played for the Braves’ Louisville farm club in the American Association in 1961 and 1962. Denver, then a Tigers farm club, also was a member of the American Association in those years. So, yes. Denver Clayton “Denny” Lemaster most likely visited Denver and pitched there.
Thanks Mark.
What family tragedies he had to overcome. Denny Lemaster pitched much better than what his career record would indicate. In 43 percent of his decisions he had run support of 2 runs or less. I’m betting that with today’s sports medicine those nagging injuries that he had to deal with could have been solved. Denny Lemaster did indeed pitch well against the Cardinals. He gave Lou Brock fits. In 99 career at bats Brock hit only .202 and struck out 21 times. Denny Lemaster also hit pretty well for a pitcher against St.Louis. A batting average of .227 and 5 multiple hit games. I looked at some of his wood carvings. A real artist.
Thanks for the insight into Denny Lemaster’s wood carving artistry, Phillip, and for the data you shared.
A look inside the numbers on Lemaster versus Lou Brock shows that Lemaster was effective at different levels of his career. Brock was 1-for-14 versus Lemaster in 1964 and 2-for-13 in 1969. Those 21 strikeouts of Brock are indeed impressive and got me wondering who struck out Brock the most. It was Bob Veale, with 36.
Lemaster did well against many good hitters, but he had trouble against Sandy Koufax. An .097 career hitter, Koufax belted a double and a home run versus Lemaster. The home run was a three-run shot on July 20, 1963, at Milwaukee. There was a solar eclipse during the game that Saturday afternoon, with the moon blotting out the sun, so that may explain Koufax’s sudden mystic power at the plate. The homer was a 38-foot smash on a 3-2 count and, as the Los Angeles Times noted, the fans probably “figured Sandy’s wallop was more of a phenomenon than the solar eclipse.” Koufax’s only other home run also was hit at Milwaukee _ against Warren Spahn in June 1962. https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B07200MLN1963.htm
I completely forgot about baseball reading this one. It gives one something to think about.
I didn’t know about the tragedies in Denny Lemaster’s life until I started doing the research on him. My jaw dropped as I started digging. His ability to carry on and to rebuild and to be successful is quite a testament to his perseverance.
One bit of bad luck after another. As a fan you never know what some of these guys might be going through. All credit to him for persevering and producing a pretty decent big league career.
You expressed that well, Ken.
FYI, Denny Lemaster was 11-8 against the Mets in his career. He pitched a complete game and struck out 10, including Jim Hickman twice, in his first start against them, a 6-3 Braves win on Sept. 26, 1962, Roger Craig got his 24th and last loss of the season in that game. The Mets lost for the 118th time before a Wednesday night gathering of 3,239 in Milwaukee. https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B09260MLN1962.htm
And Roger Craig truly was the best they had.