Hubbell gets 5 stars for this striking performance

By Bob Ryan, Globe Staff, 07/11/99

There were six doubles, two triples, and two home runs. There were 26 runs scored. There was a six-run inning. There was even the classic exhibition game circumstance of a man (Billy Herman) pinch hitting in the third inning, retiring back to the bench, and then being allowed back into the game four innings later in time to lash out a double.

Aside from direct descendants and particularly obsessed members of The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), no one remembers any of that. There is only one thing people recall about the 1934 All-Star Game, and that is Carl Hubbell and his unforgettable run of strikeouts.

Classic baseball folklore includes Bobby Thomson's home run, The Babe calling his shot, Mickey Owen missing the third strike, and Pudge Fisk whacking one off the foul pole. It includes Don Larsen's perfect game and Bill Mazeroski's homer. In the All-Star Game, it most certainly includes Ted Williams's homer off Claude Passeau and Pete Rose bowling over Ray Fosse at home plate.

But in terms of All-Star Game pitching feats, there is one standing far, far apart from all others. On July 10, 1934, in the Polo Grounds, the National League's Carl Hubbell wrote himself some baseball history by striking out the final three men of the first inning and the first two of the second. Any self-respecting baseball historian knows the names by heart, and almost invariably rattles them off so quickly it's as if the five men had one name: Ruthgehrigfoxxsimmonscronin.

OK, if you insist. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Jimmie Foxx. Al Simmons. Joe Cronin.

The greatest player of all. The two greatest first basemen. A truly punishing slugger of an outfielder. One of the all-time great shortstops. Five Hall of Famers. Punch out, punch out, punch out, punch out, punch out. Whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff. All swinging. Take a seat, fellas.

Once again, Grantland Rice, himself a charter member of any writers' Hall of Fame, was on the scene, and once again Grantland Rice was at his hyperbolic best as he informed a baseball-loving nation just what had taken place in this pre-television age ballgame before the charmed spectators in Carl Hubbell's own home park.

"The main glory went to the Carthage Catapault ... It was Carl Owen Hubbell, of Carthage, Missouri, who rode the skyline and earned the vocalistic uprising of about 50,000 fans," said Rice. "This great crowd paid its tribute to a stout heart, a keen brain, and a great left arm when Carl Hubbell struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin in succession through the first and second innings with a baffling assortment of curves, screwballs and zigzags that stood five of baseball's greatest hitters on their well-known heads."

Sixty-five years later, who recalls the fact that Simmons would subsequently bang out a pair of doubles and that both Foxx and Cronin would each rip a double? Who recalls that Cleveland's Mel Harder would pitch five heroic innings of one-hit baseball to pick up the win? Who recalls that Earl Averill, one of the American League's great players of the '30s, entered the game as a pinch hitter for starter Lefty Gomez in the fifth and stayed around long enough to smash a triple and double, good for three runs batted in? Who even remembers that the American League won the game, 9-7?

No, the only thing people remember about the 1934 All-Star Game is that once and future Most Valuable Player Carl Hubbell struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin in succession.

Carl Hubbell was 31 years old and he was in his prime. The '34 season was the second of his five consecutive 20-win seasons for the Giants, who had signed him as a minor league free agent six years earlier following his release by the Detroit organization.

It was a career Ty Cobb had almost crushed. For it was the crusty Detroit skipper who had forbidden Carl Hubbell from throwing his favorite pitch. The Tigers had purchased Hubbell from Oklahoma City for the hefty sum of $20,000, but when Cobb checked out his organization's newest acquisition, he didn't like what he saw. For Hubbell's best pitch was a screwball, and Cobb didn't like screwballs. He told Hubbell that the screwball, which is thrown with a violent counter-clockwise twist of the wrist, would hurt his arm, and he forbade the young Missourian from throwing it. The problem was that Hubbell was lost without it, and his performance proved it.

But a Giants scout recommended Hubbell to the legendary John McGraw, and McGraw was one manager who had nothing against screwballs. He had once managed a pretty fair exponent of the screwball, and he knew how effective a pitch it could be. The pitcher in question was Christy Mathewson, and the great righthander called it a fadeaway, but it was six of one and a half dozen of the other to Mr. McGraw. All he knew was that people couldn't hit it.

After an 18-win season in 1932, Hubbell had it all figured out. He was 23-12 with a league-leading 1.66 ERA for the pennant-winning Giants in '33, and now in '34 he was en route to a 21-win season. His screwball was now baseball's most famous pitch.

Hubbell was ahead, 1-0, as the American League came to bat in the first. Charlie Gehringer, one of the great All-Star Game performers ever, led off with a single. Heinie Manush walked. The heart of the order was coming up.

Ruth was 39 and he had the belly, but he was still Babe Ruth and he was going to finish with 22 homers. He went down on a 2-2 pitch. Gehrig carried no asterisk. In 1934 he would hit a league-leading .363, swat a league-leading 46 homers, and slug a league-leading .706. He fanned on a 1-2 pitch as Gehringer and Manush executed a double steal. Hubbell was unfazed. He got the menacing Foxx (.311, 44, 130 that year) on three straight screwballs.

Simmons led off in the second. The famed man with the foot-in-the-bucket stance, a .334 career hitter, became the fourth straight K victim. You could hear King Carl yelling "Next!" as Cronin, the AL's player/manager, stepped into the plate. Cronin would drive in 101 that year, but on this occasion he would take his three-strike medicine and sit down.

Bill Dickey broke the spell with a single, but there wasn't much doubt what would happen next, because the No. 9 man was Gomez. Boom, boom, boom. Six strikeouts.

The rest of the game featured a little bit of everything. "A great scene," declared Rice, "full of thrills and drab moments, brilliant spots and bonehead plays." Only one thing has survived in memory from that game. What Carl Hubbell did was so spectacular it even drew a rare whimsical remark from laconic NL manager Bill Terry, his own New York skipper.

"It looks like you've been holding out on me," cracked Terry, normally the most serious of men.

Not holding out. Just warming up. Hubbell would win as many as 26 for Terry in 1936 and would construct a record 24 straight wins. Until the '34 All-Star Game, Carl Hubbell was known as a very good pitcher. After Ruthgehrigfoxxsimmons cronin he became a Star.