Calico Joe

He was not the first major leaguer to homer on the first pitch he saw. In fact, he was the eleventh. Forty-six homered in their first at bat, eleven on the first pitch. Nonetheless, his name was in the record book. It was now open, and Joe Castle wasn’t finished with it.

In the fifth inning, Humphries started off with a fastball high and tight, a brushback meant as a warning, but Joe didn’t get the message. He worked the count to 3 and 1, then yanked a fastball down the left field line, where it barely scraped the inside of the foul pole. The third base umpire was quick to twirl his right index finger signaling a home run. Joe, who was rounding first and following the ball, kicked into a sprint and slowed slightly as he neared home plate. Now a record belonged only to him and one other. In 1951, Bob Nieman of the St. Louis Browns homered in his first two major-league at bats.

The Mets were playing the Braves in Atlanta that night, and the game was not on television. I was in Tom Sabbatini’s basement listening to Lindsey Nelson, the Mets’ wonderful play-by-play announcer, who informed us of what had just happened in Philadelphia. It didn’t take much to get Lindsey excited. “He tied a record, folks,” he said. “Think of the thousands of young men who’ve played this game, and only two have homered in their first two at bats.”

“I wonder if he can do it three times,” added Ralph Kiner, the Hall of Fame slugger and Lindsey’s sidekick.

The Cubs chased Humphries in the sixth, and the Phillies brought in a middle reliever, a right-hander named Tip Gallagher. When Joe left the on-deck circle in the top of the seventh, the score was tied 4–4, and the Phillies fans, always vocal, were silent. There was no applause, just curiosity. To their surprise, Joe dug in from the left side. Since there was no scouting report, the Phillies did not know he was a switch-hitter. No one had bothered to notice him during batting practice. He looked at a curveball low, then fouled off the next two fastballs. With two strikes, he shortened his stance and choked up three inches on the bat. The previous season, he led the Texas League with the lowest strike-out percentage of any hitter. Joe Castle was at his most dangerous with two strikes.

A slider missed low, then Gallagher came with a fastball away. Joe went with the pitch and slapped it hard to left center, a line drive that kept rising until it cleared the wall by five feet. As he circled the bases for the third consecutive time, he did so with a record that seemed untouchable. No rookie had ever homered in his first three at bats.

Joe Castle was from Calico Rock, Arkansas, a tiny, picturesque village on a bluff above the White River, on the eastern edge of the Ozark Mountains. It was Cardinals country, and had been since the days of Dizzy Dean, an Arkansas farm boy and leader of the infamous Gashouse Gang in the 1930s. His brother Paul, nicknamed Daffy, was also a pitcher on the same team. In 1934, at the height of the Gang’s fame, Dizzy predicted in spring training that he and Daffy would combine for fifty wins. They won forty-nine—thirty for Dizzy and nineteen for Daffy. Twenty years later, Stan Musial, the greatest Cardinal of all, was revered to the point of being worshipped. With a radio on every front porch, the town, like countless others in the Midwest and the Deep South, followed the beloved Cardinals with a passion during the long, hot summer nights. KMOX out of St. Louis carried the games, and the familiar voices of Harry Caray and Jack Buck could be heard on every street and in every car.

On July 12, though, the dials in Calico Rock had been switched to WGN out of Chicago, and Joe’s friends and family were hanging on every pitch. The Cardinals–Cubs rivalry was the greatest in the National League, and though many in Calico Rock found it difficult to believe they were rooting for the hated Cubs, they were suddenly doing so, and with a fervor. In a matter of hours, they had been converted to Cubs fans. After the first home run, a crowd quickly gathered outside Evans Drug Store on Main Street. The second home run sent them into a giddy celebration, and the crowd continued to grow. When Joe’s parents, two brothers, their wives, and their small children showed up to join the party, they were greeted with bear hugs and cheers.

The third home run sent the entire town into orbit. They were also celebrating in the streets and pubs of Chicago.