Harry "Fritz" Dorish, the last American League pitcher to steal home

On Friday, June 2, 1950, a crowd of 11,339 filed into Griffith Stadium in our nation's capital to watch a twilight-night doubleheader between the visiting St. Louis Browns and the hometown Washington Senators, arguably the two worst teams in the history of Major League baseball?certainly the two worst teams ever to play in the American League. At nine wins and 25 losses, the Browns, mired as usual in eighth?and last?place, trailed the league-leading New York Yankees by 16 and a half games. A bit less hapless?19 wins and 18 losses, eight games behind the Yanks?the Senators dwelled in fifth place, not quite living up to the singsongy adage forever associated with the team: "First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League."

St. Louis pummeled Washington in the opener 10-5, with Browns first baseman Hank "Bow Wow" Arft going 5-for-5; in the nightcap, the onslaught continued, as the Brownies, behind the hitting, running and pitching of starter Harry "Fritz" Dorish, toasted the floundering Nats 9-3. Dorish, a 28-year-old right-hander who entered the game with no wins and two losses for the season, scattered seven hits, struck out three, walked two, threw one wild pitch and hit a batter (catcher Al Evans) while going the full nine innings. He excelled at the plate, too?unusual for him?knocking in a run while doubling twice, once in the fifth inning off Senators relief pitcher Dick "Legs" Weik. With Dorish at second base, Weik walked Browns centerfielder Ray Coleman, and Harry advanced to third base on ball four, a wild pitch. This brought to bat Browns shortstop Tom "Muscles" Upton, and set in motion one of those arcane moments peculiar to baseball, something unremarkable at the time, but that has, over the past half-century, assumed brain-twisting trivia-question status as a result of the sport's relentless mania for recordkeeping: The Browns executed a successful double steal, Coleman taking second base, Dorish taking home plate, making Harry...the last American League pitcher to steal home.

In baseball's gargantuan diorama, stealing home plate occupies a teeny-tiny piece of real estate. Even during the game's razzle-dazzle early days it wasn't exactly an everyday occurrence, and it almost never happens today. During his 10 seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 to 1956, Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson accomplished the feat 19 times, making him the maneuver's acknowledged master. Because they batted far less frequently, and because they're (mostly) notoriously poor hitters, few pitchers found themselves in circumstances that allowed them to steal home. And fearful of injury in a collision at the plate?moving pitcher pounding into stationary catcher?managers were understandably circumspect of "sending" a pitcher. Still, it happened: Back when he pitched for the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth stole home in 1918; other pitchers who've done it include Fred Hutchinson (Detroit Tigers, 1947), Joe Haynes (Chicago White Sox, 1944), Johnny "The Dutch Master" Vander Meer (Cincinnati Reds, 1943) and Bucky Walters (Cincinnati, 1946). After Dorish, only Don "Newk" Newcombe of the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers has stolen home, and that was a fluke.

Newcombe, the modern-day majors' first great black pitcher, also was a terrific hitter. On May 26, 1955, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, the Dodgers, behind Newcombe, beat the Pirates 6-2. Abetting his own cause, Newcombe tripled in the top of the ninth inning, after which he stole home during an intended squeeze play with Junior Gilliam at bat and the Pirates' Roy Face on the mound. "Face saw Newcombe lumbering homeward and pitched wide," The New York Times reported the following day. "The pitch was so wide it bounced off [catcher] Jack Shepard's glove and Newk trotted over the plate without a play being made on him... It wasn't an impressive theft, but it will go in the records as a steal nevertheless."

Since Newcombe, nada. The AL virtually banished pitchers from the batter's box when it inaugurated its designated hitter rule at the outset of the 1973 season, while over in the NL managers have quietly removed the pitcher-steals-home item from that league's menu.

Harry Dorish, meanwhile, went on to figure prominently in two related incidents from baseball's Bizarro World. On May 15, 1951, in his first season with the Chicago White Sox, Dorish faced the Red Sox at Boston's Fenway Park. The Red Sox trailed 7-6 entering the bottom of the ninth. With Boston great Ted Williams scheduled to lead off the inning, first-year White Sox manager Paul Richards engineered an unorthodox and inspired pitcher pas de deux: he moved Dorish to third base, replacing Minnie Minoso, and brought in left-hander Billy Pierce to face the left-hand-hitting Williams, who promptly popped out. Then Richards removed Pierce, brought Dorish back to the mound, and sent in Floyd Baker to play third. The Red Sox scratched out a run off Dorish to tie the game, necessitating extra innings, but Harry held them hitless in the 10th and 11th innings, setting up what the next day's Chicago Tribune termed "the climax of a daffy afternoon," as White Sox second baseman Nellie Fox, in his fifth season as a big-leaguer, hit his first career home run in the 11th, with Dorish picking up the win.

"Paul Richards did a lot of clever things like that," notes Eleanor Dorish, Harry's wife of 52 years, speaking over the phone from her home in Kingston, PA, just north of Wilkes-Barre.

He certainly did. A bit more than two years later, on June 25, 1953, with the White Sox playing New York in Yankee Stadium, Richards pulled the same pitcher double-whammy, only this time in reverse. "It was Barnum & Bailey baseball at its best," quipped the Chicago Tribune on June 26, "in what must have been one of the wackiest ninth innings on record. Paul Richards went into a series of tactical maneuvers which had everyone in the park confused, even the scorekeepers."

With the Sox ahead 4-2 going into the bottom of the ninth, Richards moved starting pitcher Billy Pierce from the mound to first base, first baseman Freddie Marsh to third, and brought in Dorish to face the Yankees' Don Bollweg, who wisely dragged a bunt up the first-base line to Pierce. Billy fielded the ball, tossed it to Harry, but in a close play at first umpire Ed Hurley called Bollweg safe. An enraged Richards burst from the White Sox dugout and berated Hurley, who ejected the manager. Unruffled by this turn of events, Dorish induced Gil McDougald to ground out, then gave way to Pierce, who nailed down the final two outs for a Chicago win.

Born in Swoyersville, PA, one town over from Kingston, on July 13, 1921, Harry Dorish, son of Hritz and Anna, pitched sensationally for Swoyersville High's baseball team for four years, then signed with the Red Sox after graduation in 1941, eventually putting in time with Boston's Scranton farm team. But World War II claimed him, and Dorish served three years with the Army in New Caledonia and Guadalcanal as a sergeant, supervising meals for officers and patients at medical hospitals; he also pitched for Army teams, often facing other pro ballplayers. Discharged in 1946, he joined the Red Sox's minor league club in Louisville, then jumped to the majors in 1947, winning his first start?against the Senators?that April. From 1947 to 1949, Dorish, at 5 feet, 11 inches and a fairly hefty 206 pounds, won seven and lost nine games with the Sox, pitching mostly in relief.

Over the course of the next seven seasons in the AL?St. Louis (1950), Chicago (1951-1955), Baltimore (1955-1956) and, again, Boston (1956)?he acquired a reputation as a reliable reliever, leading the league in saves (11) in 1952 with the White Sox. "The sinker is my favorite pitch," he confided to Pacific Stars & Stripes in 1953, "but I got another special ball that Paul [Richards] showed me?the palm ball. You just sort of grip it way into your hand and let go, and it's perfect for a change of pace."

Dorish ceased active play after the 1956 season, his career record a respectable, if unspectacular, 45 wins and 43 losses, with an earned run average of 3.83. The Red Sox liked Dorish so much that in 1963 the team hired him as its pitching coach. He held a similar post with the Atlanta Braves from 1968 to 1971, later worked as a scout for Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and, in his final baseball gig, supervised Cincinnati's farm teams' pitching corps as a roving coach, retiring in 1986 to his home in Kingston.

By then, with the AL's designated hitter rule in place for 13 years, Dorish had become inextricably entrenched in geeky baseball trivia as...the last American League pitcher to steal home, a position he's likely to occupy, barring some extravagant whimsy, until kingdom come. "He always said, 'If they don't change the rules, I'll stay in the record books,'" recalls his brother John, speaking from Swoyersville.

And yet baseball has a way of glacially eroding everything in its path. Since Dorish's record-establishing moment in 1950, the Washington Senators have perished twice: the original team shuffled off to Minnesota after the 1960 season, while the Senators II packed it in for Texas 11 years later. As for the St. Louis Browns, they finally skulked out of town in 1953, beginning life anew as the Baltimore Orioles the next year. And Harry Dorish, age 79, died from complications of pneumonia at a Wilkes-Barre hospital on Dec. 31.