THE VANDER MEERACLE

Author

Matthew Garringer
August 29, 2023

Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that loves baseball more than Biggie Smalls loved being called “Big Poppa.”

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Today’s story is about

After Michael Lorenzen’s dominant performance a few weeks ago, there have only been 322 no-hitters in all of baseball.

That’s over a span of about about 240,000 games.

Which means that on average a no-no happens once every 745 games or so.

Needless to say, throwing two of them back-to-back would be virtually impossible, but that’s exactly what Johnny Vander Meer did back in 1938.

I know what you’re thinking…

Vander Meer played during the WWII era and spent his entire career with the Cincinnati Reds.

Early on in his career, he lacked control.

Before being called up by the Reds, he bounced around a lot in the minors.

He started with the Dayton Ducks(a Brooklyn Dodgers minor league team), then to the Scranton Miners, to the Nashville Volunteers, and finally ended up with the Durham Bulls.

During his three years in the system, it seemed that nobody saw potential in the lefty, but something changed in Durham.

His manager, along with the help of his catcher, Johnny Gooch (great candidate for Strange Names), helped him straighten out his fastball.

He won 19 games and struck out 295 batters in the 1936 season.

It took one more up-down year, but he got called up to the Reds in 1938.

They didn’t expect much from Johnny, maybe he could turn into a solid rotation guy and eat 200 innings a year, but he wasn’t projected to be their ace by any means.

But Vander Meer started his season 5-2, and then went on one of the most dominant pitching streaks in baseball history.

His first no-hitter was on June 11th against the Boston Bees - Johnny walked three batters and struck out four.

It was the first no-hitter the Reds had seen since Hod Eller in 1919.

The second one came against the Brooklyn Dodgers on June 15th, in New York City’s first-ever night game.

Under the bright lights, 38,000 fans witnessed Vander Meer set a record that has, and probably never will be, broken.

It wasn’t the prettiest no-hitter either.

Johnny walked 8 batters, and even loaded the bases in the 9th, but at the end of the game, the score was 6-0 and there was a doughnut in the hit column for the Dodgers.

It was full circle for Vander Meer, who was originally drafted by the Dodgers, but had been traded away during those initial years when he struggled in the minors.

Johnny went on to have pretty successful MLB career.

He was a four-time All Star, won the Sporting News’ Player of the Year, and became a World Series champion in 1940.

THROWBACK MUGS

The good folks over at Dugout Mugs are always dropping cool new shit.

This week they decided to bring back the glory days with old-school inked logos on their classic bat mugs.

For a limited time, they’re 20% off - no code needed.

These turned out pretty amazing.

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STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

He’s a man that went by many names: “Belve”, “Bill”, “B Times three”, “B Cube.”

I made up those last two, but this is baseball man, you gotta have fun with it.

Even though he played in the show for five years and pitched over 200 innings, there’s not much out there about Bean.

Most of his career was spent in Cleveland, and if you judge it strictly by the numbers, he was an average pitcher at best.

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