RetroSimba

A string bean who slung sinkers with a sweeping sidearm motion, Wayne Granger peered warily from the mound as Hank Aaron took his stance in the batter’s box. It was the ninth inning, two outs, bases loaded, and the 1973 Cardinals led the Braves, 4-3, at Atlanta.

Granger had been in this spot before since getting to the majors with St. Louis in 1968. Aaron would wait for the right-handed reliever’s sinking fastball and bash it if it didn’t dip as it neared the plate.

This time, Granger told himself, he’d do it differently. He’d throw soft instead of hard.

“He was throwing that slow curveball,” Aaron said to Dick Kaegel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “and it just kept getting slower and slower and slower, and slower and slower and slower.”

Aaron took the first pitch for ball one. He fouled off the second, looked at strike two and watched another go by for ball two. Tension building on every pitch, he fouled off seven in a row. Four of the fouls sailed deep into the seats in left.

“I wasn’t about to turn up one notch to his speed,” Granger said to the Atlanta Journal. His offerings to Aaron were “my slop pitch, a sort of slider-curve thrown underhanded,” Granger told the Post-Dispatch

Finally, on Granger’s 12th pitch to him, Aaron lofted a shallow fly to Lou Brock in left for the game-ending out.

“I love that kind of situation _ except he won,” Aaron told the Journal. Boxscore

Finding his form

Granger might have become Aaron’s teammate if not for a scout changing jobs.

Pitching for a semipro team in his home state of Massachusetts, “I was all set to sign with the Braves in the fall of 1964,” Granger recalled to Wilt Browning of the Atlanta Journal. “Jeff Jones, who was the regional scout for the Braves in New England, had made me a good offer, but he asked me to wait until the first of the year. He didn’t say why, but he said it was something good. Then he called me on the first of January and asked me if I’d like to sign with the world champions.”

Jones had jumped from the Braves to the Cardinals, the 1964 World Series champions. The Cardinals agreed to give Granger the $20,000 bonus Jones had offered when he worked for the Braves. Granger, who turned 21 in 1965, followed the money, signing with St. Louis.

At 6-foot-2 and 165 pounds, Granger was a broomstick. “He might be mistaken for Ichabod Crane,” the Tulsa World noted. According to the Post-Dispatch, “He’s so skinny that you couldn’t get three digits on the back of his uniform.”

“Other pitchers complained of sore muscles,” Granger told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “but I didn’t have any muscles to get sore.”

The Cardinals tried him as a starter his first season in their farm system. Granger threw overhand then. Though he totaled 200 innings, “I just didn’t throw with enough velocity to (eventually) get the ball past major league hitters,” Granger told the New York Times, “so I switched from a three-quarter motion to sidearm, where my natural sinker is much more effective.”

Granger broke a thumb on a rundown play at 1966 spring training. When he recovered, Arkansas manager Vern Rapp had Granger work himself into condition in the bullpen. Granger did so well as a reliever that Rapp kept him in that role. Granger responded with an 11-2 record and 1.80 ERA.

Promoted to Tulsa in 1967, Granger came under the guidance of its manager, Warren Spahn.

“The luckiest break I had in my career was when I had Warren Spahn as my manager,” Granger said to Arthur Daley of the New York Times. “He’s to pitching what Ted Williams is to hitting. It’s a pure science to them. They know absolutely everything there is to know about their specialties.

“Spahnie told me about the instructions he once had given Del Crandall, his catcher. ‘When you give a target,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to see the glove. I want to be able to see the pocket of the glove so that I can feel I’m looking down a funnel at the precise target, and that’s where I want to put the ball.’ He taught me concentration. I can’t throw within the six-inch circle he used to target, but I can hit it one out of three times and come close enough on the others.”

Redbirds to Reds

Called up to the Cardinals in May 1968, Granger’s sidearm sinker baffled National League batters. He totaled four wins, four saves and posted a 2.25 ERA in 34 games. Asked what was the best thing about being a big-leaguer, Granger replied to the Enquirer, “Getting up at noon and going to have a steak and then going to the ballpark to play a boy’s game.”

In the 1968 World Series, the rookie made one appearance, mopping up in Game 6 when the Tigers led, 13-0. “Nervous as hell,” Granger recalled to the Orlando Sentinel. After hitting Al Kaline with a pitch in the eighth inning, “I got a lot more nervous,” Granger said. Then he plunked Willie Horton, too. Boxscore

On the day after the Tigers won Game 7, Granger and Bobby Tolan were sent to the Reds for Vada Pinson. One reason Granger was included was the Cardinals didn’t think they could protect him from being taken in the Oct. 14, 1968, National League expansion draft. In addition to their core veterans, the Cardinals had prospects Jerry Reuss and Ted Simmons among the 15 players on their protected list. Rather than lose Granger to the draft, the Cardinals offered him to help land Pinson, a player they coveted to replace Roger Maris, who retired.

(In an unusual twist, Granger and Tolan continued to play for the Cardinals for a while after the trade. The Reds gave permission for Granger and Tolan to participate in the Cardinals’ 18-game goodwill tour of Japan in fall 1968. Granger was 5-0 for the Cardinals against Japanese all-star teams.  “The Japanese baseball is smaller than ours,” Granger told John Hollis of the Houston Post. “I swear I threw a pitch one time that dropped three feet. You can make that Japanese baseball do a lot of funny things.”)

Reds general manager Bob Howsam, who had the same title with the Cardinals when Granger and Tolan were in the St. Louis farm system, was delighted to acquire the pair. “It had to come close to being the worst trade St. Louis ever made,” Arthur Daley of the Times declared.

While Pinson disappointed and lasted one season in St. Louis, Granger and Tolan had breakout years for the 1969 Reds. Tolan batted .305 with 93 RBI and 26 stolen bases. Granger pitched in 90 games and had nine wins, 27 saves and a 2.80 ERA. Enquirer columnist Barry McDermott described the lanky reliever as “a 165-pounder with a 500-pound arm and 1,000-pound heart.”

“He’s the coolest individual I’ve ever seen under pressure,” Reds manager Dave Bristol told the newspaper. “Nothing seems to bother him.”

In 1970, with Sparky Anderson as manager, the Reds won the pennant and Tolan and Granger were key contributors. Tolan hit .316 with 80 RBI and 57 steals. Granger had 35 saves and a 2.66 ERA. “His sidearm ball zings in with whiplash effect,” the New York Times observed.

(Granger did not pitch well, though, in the 1970 World Series. In Game 3, he gave up a grand slam to Orioles pitcher Dave McNally. “”It was probably the worst pitch in baseball history,” Granger told the Enquirer. Boxscore, Video

Turn on the power

The zip began disappearing from Granger’s sinker. As he told the Orlando Sentinel, “From 1971 on, it was a downhill race.” He ended up pitching for seven clubs in nine big-league seasons. The Cardinals reacquired Granger in November 1972 and it turned out to be another bad deal for them. They gave up Larry Hisle and John Cumberland to get him. Granger was 2-4 with five saves and a 4.24 ERA for the 1973 Cardinals before they shipped him to the Yankees.

This post, though, started with a story about Granger and Hank Aaron, so it’s fitting that it ends with a story about a home run.

In a most unlikely scenario, Granger made like Babe Ruth, calling his shot, and swatting the lone home run of his professional career.

On July 9, 1971, Granger retired five Mets batters in a row. With the Reds ahead, 5-3, in the eighth, Sparky Anderson wanted to keep Granger in the game, so he let him bat with two outs, none on, against Ray Sadecki, the former Cardinal.

Granger rarely batted. He’d never produced a RBI or extra-base hit since coming to the majors.

He grabbed a bat belonging to slugger Lee May and went to face Sadecki. Reds pitching coach Larry Shepard yelled out, “Take a good cut, Wayne.” Granger yelled back, “You watch this swing,” and then pointed to the center field stands.

Granger took a big swing at Sadecki’s first pitch and missed it by a foot. He took a similar hack at the second pitch. This time, the skinny man got the fat part of the bat on the ball, and it carried over the wall in left-center for a home run.

As Granger trotted around the bases, his teammate, Jim Merritt, was stretched out in the dugout as though he had fainted, the Dayton Journal Herald reported.

Granger told the Troy Daily News, “I never hit a ball that far before.” Boxscore