Former St. Louis Cardinals catcher Hobie Landrith played only briefly with the team, but he participated in a historic game that the Cardinals played many years ago.
What did he do?
He also was part of a long-forgotten trade that led to a second transaction that changed baseball history, especially for his former team in St. Louis.
Can you figure that one out?
(We pause for you to cogitate. No fair Googling.)
Longtime baseball fans might hear a faint bell in their minds at the mention of his name but only a few have the kind of encyclopedic memory to recall his significance.
Hobie Landrith died April 6, just short of 61 years since his historic game. He was 93.
His 14 years of major league baseball didn’t produce memorable stats—a .233 batting average, 34 home runs, 203 home runs. In his two years with the Cardinals he was a backup catcher for Hal Smith.
The answer to the first question is:
Hobie Landrith was the New York Mets’ first player. He was picked in the expansion draft of 1961 and was the starting catcher on April 11, 1962—against the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Cardinals won 11-4. Larry Jackson got the win. Roger Craig took the loss, the first of his 24 losses that year (and the first of 110 losses for the Mets). Landrith went oh for four. He was credited with one of the three Mets’ errors. The Cardinals had 16 hits, four by Julian Javier. Stan Musial went three for three.
The top three Mets pitchers that year, by the way, were Craig at 10-24. Al Jackson went 8-20, and Jay Hook was 8-19. Their fourth pitcher, Bob Miller, was 1-12.
The Cardinals went 84-78-1. They finished sixth. Jackson finished 16-11, one win more than Bob Gibson, 15-13 despite a 2.86 ERA.
We’re about to fall into the statistical pit of baseball, which is awfully easy to do. So let’s get back to Hobie Landrith.
Landrith was an important first choice for the Metropolitans (their real name) because, as manager Casey Stengel remarked, “You gotta have a catcher or you’d have a lot of passed balls.”
One of these days we’re going to have to remember Casey, a Kansas City native who once thought about becoming a dentist, and some of the things he said. We didn’t have a master of the misstatement and the malaprop like Casey until Mike Shannon and his Shannonisms (“The outfield is deep and playing him straight-away and the infield is the same except first, second, third, and short are playing him to pull.”
Landrith played only one season with the lovable losers, as they were called. They lost the first ten games they ever played and lost 120 overall.
He was out of baseball in the third season after that.
Landrith also played a role in what arguably is the greatest trade in Cardinals history. After two years in St. Louis, he was traded in October, 1958 to the San Francisco Giants along with Billy Muffett and Benny Valenzuela for Marv Grissom and—
Ernie Broglio.
In June of ’64, the Cardinals sent Broglio, Bobby Schantz, and Doug Clemens to the Cubs for Jack Spring, Paul Toth and—
Lou Brock.
Broglio was out of baseball a couple years later. Brock is in the Hall of Fame.
The trade became infamous almost immediately and is remembered by the Emil Verban Society (a Washington, D. C. group of Cubs fans who are in a club named for an obscure second baseman). Each year they give a Brock-for-Broglio Judgment award to recognize bad decision-making. One recipient a few years ago was Saddam Hussein who was honored for his invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Funny, sometimes, how a story starts out going one way and before it’s done, it is someplace else, entirely, from a backup forgotten catcher to an all-time great.
-0-