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Cardinals third baseman Tommy Glaviano experienced a fielder’s worst nightmare.

On May 18, 1950, Glaviano made four errors, including three in a row in the ninth inning, in a game against the Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The Cardinals, who led 8-0 entering the eighth inning, lost 9-8.

The Cardinals committed a total of six errors in the game, but the most costly were Glaviano’s gaffes in the ninth, when the Dodgers scored five times in what the New York Daily News described “as miraculous a finish as this famed Ebbets Field grotto had ever seen.”

Hot corner hustler

Glaviano was born and raised in Sacramento. The Cardinals signed him when he was 17. After two seasons in the Cardinals’ farm system, Glaviano served three years (1943-45) in the Coast Guard before returning to the minors.

After producing a .415 on-base percentage in 106 games for Columbus, Ohio, in 1948, Glaviano won the Cardinals’ third base job at spring training in 1949.

At 5 feet 9 and 175 pounds, Glaviano was “a short, stocky throwback to the glamorous Gashouse Gang era,” The Sporting News reported.

Bob Broeg of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described Glaviano as “a sawed-off Pepper Martin.”

Glaviano, 25, made his major-league debut on April 19, 1949, in the Cardinals’ season opener versus the Reds at Cincinnati.

The Reds led, 1-0, in the sixth inning and had runners on second and third, with two outs, when Harry Brecheen got Virgil Stallcup to hit a slow grounder. Glaviano went far to his left, gloved the ball and whipped a side-armed throw to first. The ball sailed off target, struck Stallcup in the left cheek and bounced away, allowing both runners to score on the error. The Reds won, 3-1. Boxscore

Glaviano and another rookie, Eddie Kazak, split time at third base for the 1949 Cardinals. Glaviano hit .267 and played the last three weeks of the season with torn cartilage in his throwing arm, The Sporting News reported.

Good start to season

In 1950, Kazak was the Opening Day third baseman for the Cardinals, but Glaviano took over a week into the season. “The pitchers feel better with him at third,” Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer told The Sporting News.

Batting leadoff, Glaviano quit swinging for homers and got more selective at the plate. “He’s learning how to hit outside pitching to the opposite field,” Dyer said.

Glaviano hit .342 in his first 20 games for the 1950 Cardinals and made four errors. He “has covered more ground than any Cardinals third baseman in years,” Broeg noted in the Post-Dispatch.

Storm clouds

On a raw overcast Thursday afternoon with a temperature of 50 degrees, the Cardinals played the finale of a three-game series at Brooklyn after losing the first two to the Dodgers.

Glaviano’s home run leading off the fourth inning against starter Joe Hatten extended the Cardinals’ lead to 4-0.

With the Cardinals ahead, 8-0, in the sixth, errors by Glaviano and second baseman Red Schoendienst put Dodgers runners on first and third with none out. Starter Howie Pollet escaped unscathed, getting Jackie Robinson on a grounder to the mound, Carl Furillo on a pop foul and Gil Hodges on a strikeout.

“Here was a game that appeared so far gone that even the manager had given up on it, and you couldn’t blame him,” Dick Young wrote in the New York Daily News. The Dodgers “had looked more miserable than the weather. They hadn’t hit, their pitching had been punk, and even their defense, which has been Brooklyn’s matchless pride, had been butchered.”

Pollet limited the Dodgers to four hits through seven innings, but in the eighth it began to rain and his back stiffened. Furillo hit a three-run home run. After Duke Snider and Bruce Edwards each singled, putting runners on first and third with two outs, Gerry Staley relieved Pollet and yielded a run-scoring single to Pee Wee Reese, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 8-4.

Throwing away a win

With rain falling steadily, Jim Russell led off the Dodgers’ ninth with a double against Staley and came home on Jackie Robinson’s double, making the score 8-5.

Al Brazle relieved and retired Furillo for the first out. Hodges hit a grounder to short, but Marty Marion “slipped on the muddy infield and couldn’t get his body behind a throw to first,” the Post-Dispatch reported.

Robinson stayed at second on the play and Hodges was safe with an infield single. Brazle walked Snider, loading the bases.

Roy Campanella hit a one-hopper to Glaviano, who hoped to start a game-ending double play. In his haste, Glaviano made a wide throw to second and Schoendienst had to leave the bag to catch it. Robinson scored from third on the error, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 8-6, and the bases remained loaded.

Rookie Cloyd Boyer relieved Brazle and got Eddie Miksis to hit a high bouncer directly to Glaviano. Instead of throwing to second for a likely forceout and the start of a possible game-ending double play, Glaviano fired the ball toward home. The wild toss pulled catcher Del Rice off the plate and he “had to dive flat on his face for the save,” the New York Daily News reported.

Hodges scored from third on Glaviano’s second consecutive error, getting the Dodgers within a run at 8-7, and the bases still were full.

Reese came up next and hit a sharp grounder to Glaviano, who was positioned near the bag. “He had planned to scoop it up, step on third and fire to first” to complete a game-ending double play, the New York Daily News reported.

Instead, in moving toward the bag, Glaviano let the ball trickle through his legs and roll into short left field for an error. Snider and Campanella scored. giving the Dodgers a 9-8 victory. Boxscore

Stayin’ alive

Dick Young’s lead paragraph in the next morning’s New York Daily News was a gem: “Joe Garagiola didn’t get any sleep last night. He lay awake to make sure his roommate, Tommy Glaviano, wouldn’t take a walk out a window.”

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat described the collapse as “one of the goofiest shows” staged by the Cardinals. The Post-Dispatch called it “a cruel body blow.”

In the clubhouse, Glaviano sat with his head lowered, “trying to fight back tears that wanted to pour like the chilling rain which fell from the time the Dodgers’ bats first began to rattle,” the Post-Dispatch reported.

“The kid’s insides are eating him out,” said Cardinals reserve infielder Eddie Miller, “but he’ll be all right.”

Dyer said, “That was the most bitter defeat of any I’ve had in the years I’ve managed.”

In the Post-Dispatch, Broeg described Glaviano as a third baseman “with a thick chest, courage and agility” as well as “a scatter arm.”

“About his arm,” Dyer said, “it hasn’t been as accurate since he hurt his right shoulder two years ago at Columbus. I think it locks on him when he throws in a hurry, spoiling his aim.”

Dyer stuck with Glaviano at third base the rest of the 1950 season. He hit .285 with 29 doubles and scored 92 runs. His 25 errors at third base were one less than the 26 of the Giants’ Hank Thompson, who made the most misplays among 1950 National League third basemen.

Marty Marion became Cardinals manager in 1951 and decided at spring training to move Glaviano to center field. On April 10, a week before the regular season opened, Glaviano crashed into an outfield wall pursuing a drive in an exhibition game against the Browns and injured his right shoulder.

Glaviano wasn’t the same after the injury. He was a utility player for the Cardinals in 1951 and 1952. The Phillies claimed him on waivers and he spent 1953, his final season in the majors, with them.

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Lon Warneke threw balls and strikes, and wanted to call those pitches, too.

On May 13, 1940, Warneke, a Cardinals pitcher, and Jimmie Wilson, a Reds coach, served as umpires in a game between the teams at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.

When National League umpires didn’t show for the game because of a scheduling snafu, one member of each team was chosen to fill in as arbiters.

The Cardinals, given their choice of a Reds representative, selected Wilson, their former catcher who played in three World Series for them. The Reds, asked to pick a member of the Cardinals, chose Warneke, who viewed umpiring as a dream assignment.

“I had a hankering for it even before I started playing baseball,” Warneke told The Sporting News. “Some kids want to become conductors, engineers, policemen, firemen. I wanted to be an umpire.”

Nine years later, Warneke became a full-time National League umpire.

“I like it better than pitching,” Warneke said. “I get just as much satisfaction out of umpiring a good game as I did out of pitching one.”

Failure to communicate

A communication breakdown between Reds management and National League officials created the need for Warneke and Wilson to fill in as umpires for a game.

After the Ohio River flooded and caused the postponement of the Cardinals-Reds game at Cincinnati on April 23, 1940, the teams agreed to a makeup game on Monday, May 13, at 3 p.m.

The date of the rescheduled game made sense. The Reds played the Cardinals in a Sunday doubleheader on May 12 in St. Louis and both clubs were scheduled to use May 13 as an off day before embarking on road trips to the East Coast.

There was only one problem: Reds officials “failed to notify us that the game, postponed from April 23, was to be played,” National League president Ford Frick told the Associated Press.

Therefore, no umpires were assigned.

Help wanted

As game time neared on May 13 and no umpires appeared, Reds officials frantically began making phone calls. One was to Larry Goetz, a National League umpire who lived in Cincinnati.

Goetz, Babe Pinelli and Beans Reardon were the umpires who worked the May 12 Reds-Cardinals doubleheader at St. Louis. The crew’s next scheduled game was May 14, Pirates vs. Giants, at the Polo Grounds in New York. On his way from St. Louis to New York, Goetz stopped home in Cincinnati.

“Goetz was at the railroad station ready to board a 3 o’clock train for New York when they located him,” the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported.

The start of the game was delayed 29 minutes as the clubs waited for Goetz. During the delay, Warneke and Wilson were recruited to round out the umpiring crew.

Fair and square

It was determined Goetz would work the plate, Wilson would be the umpire at first base and Warneke would be stationed at third.

“Wilson wore an umpire’s cap and a black windbreaker over his uniform shirt,” the Globe-Democrat reported. “Warneke had on his regular uniform topped by a red windbreaker, which he soon discarded for a black one.”

Warneke and Wilson “had numerous close plays to decide on the bases and they turned in a good day’s work,” the Globe-Democrat reported. “Each called plays in critical moments against their own mates.”

For instance, in the second inning the Cardinals had the bases loaded with two outs when Stu Martin hit a line drive to center. Harry Craft raced in, dived headlong, rolled over and thrust his arm above his head to show he had the ball.

Some thought Craft trapped it, but Warneke “majestically called it an out,” the Dayton Daily News reported. “The Cardinals couldn’t plead with their own Honest Lon, and thus the side was retired.”

In the eighth inning, the Cardinals’ Joe Medwick “registered a mild beef against Wilson when he was called out on a close play at first,” the Globe-Democrat reported. Three innings later, when Medwick was called out by Warneke on another close play at second, he showed “his disgust by scooping a handful of dust and throwing it back to the ground. However, Medwick said nothing to Warneke.”

Fit to be tied

The game was noteworthy for more than the unusual umpiring setup. Johnny Mize hit three home runs for the Cardinals and Reds leadoff batter Bill Werber hit four doubles.

Mize’s third home run, a solo shot versus Milt Shoffner with two outs in the top of the 13th, gave the Cardinals an 8-7 lead.

In the bottom half of the inning, backup catcher Williard Hershberger, batting for shortstop Eddie Joost with two outs and none on against Clyde Shoun, doubled. Lee Gamble ran for Hershberger.

Pitcher Bucky Walters, batting for Shoffner, was up next. Walters struck out swinging for what should have been the game-ending out, but catcher Bill DeLancey allowed the ball “to squirt out of his hands and roll into the Cardinals dugout,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

The error enabled Walters to reach first and Gamble to get to third. Jack Russell relieved Shoun and Werber smacked his first pitch for a single, his fifth hit of the game, scoring Gamble with the tying run.

After neither team scored in the 14th, Goetz stopped play at 7 p.m. because of darkness with the score tied at 8-8. Although Crosley Field had lights, a National League rule prohibited lights from being turned on to finish a day game. Boxscore

“It was a game that had everything but a decision at the end of it,” wrote Si Burick of the Dayton Daily News.

All statistics counted, but the tie didn’t count in the standings and the game was scheduled to be replayed as part of an Aug. 11 doubleheader at Cincinnati.

The Cardinals won both games of the Aug. 11 doubleheader, 3-2 and 3-1. Warneke was the winning pitcher in Game 2. The umpires for both games were the three who were supposed to officiate the May 13 game: Goetz, Pinelli and Reardon.

Career change

In July 1942, the Cardinals sold Warneke’s contract to the Cubs, whose manager was his one-time umpiring partner, Jimmie Wilson. Warneke pitched for Wilson in 1942 and 1943.

After finishing his playing career with the 1945 Cubs, Warneke became an umpire in the Pacific Coast League in 1946. He joined the umpiring staff of the National League in 1949 and remained on the job through the 1955 season.

“Hustling, being in the right position to see the plays, and calling them quickly is half the battle in good umpiring,” Warneke told The Sporting News.

“The first and hardest thing I had to learn when I became an umpire was to forget I played ball. As a pitcher, I anticipated where I would throw the ball and what I would do the minute it was hit to me. When I first started umpiring, I did the same thing, anticipating plays, but I soon learned everybody didn’t think like I did. When the play was made, I was often leaning or starting the wrong way. I decided to treat every play, every pitch, as a separate and distinct challenge and handle it accordingly.”

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