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JUNE 29, 1954 . . . We just need to get through these two games at Milwaukee and then we can get home to Chicago for the four-game holiday series against St. Louis back at Wrigley. Over the next 13 days before the All Star break we’ve got 14 games against the Braves (35-36), Cardinals (34-40) and Redlegs (40-33). How we handle that run is going to say a lot for what the rest of our season could look like,
Tonight our pitchers are all well rested, thanks to the day off yesterday, and Warren Hacker (8-4, 2.39 ERA, 120.1 IP, 64 K’s, 0.96 WHIP) will be taking the mound against the Braves’ Art Fowler (3-2, 4.65 ERA, 71.2 IP, 34 K’s, 1.40 WHIP). Cavarretta put us up 2-0 with another bomb to right field in the top of the first, giving him his ninth homer of the season, But Hacker started out with two walks and a hit into the outfield, loading the bases and putting us in a real jam with no outs. They got a hit into the right-field corner to tie the score in the bottom of the first, at which point Hacker seemed to completely melt down. Another hit and then a sac-fly to left each scored runs, and by the time he got the final out we were down 2-4 and he’d thrown 35 pitches. And it got no better in the bottom of the second, his stuff just wasn’t there. Two more walks and a hit knocked in another run and then with Bob Spicer warming up, he allowed a hit into deep center that blew the lead to 7-2, a two-run triple, all with two outs! He got the final out but the damage was done.
I sat Spicer down and brought Vern Fear in to pitch in the bottom of the third with us trailing 7-2 against the Braves. Bob Spicer then came in with two outs and a man on first in the bottom of the fourth, and he ended the inning on a strikeout, the lead for Milwaukee still at five runs. Spicer pitched very efficiently and gave us real consistency through the middle of the game, though our bats were struggling to catch fire. The Braves added two runs in the bottom of the eighth, one on an error at home plate by Elston Howard, and then a three-run homer put it completely and irrevocably out of reach. This game was an epic humiliation, and it was Spicer who unfairly took the brunt of it in the eighth. They set us down one, two, three in the ninth to end this one as a 12-2 blowout.
Hacker (8-5, 2.87 ERA) took the loss, giving up six hits and seven earned runs in just two innings, with four walks and a strikeout. Vern Fear made it through 1.2 innings with two hits and three strikeouts, and Spicer had 3.1 innings of great pitching followed by the disaster that was the eighth. All totaled, through 4.1 innings, he gave up eight hits, five earned runs and got a strikeout with a single walk, ballooning his ERA to 7.94 as he took one for the team. They out-hit us 16-8, with Kaline (three hits, one run) and Rosen (two hits) trying and failing to get the team to rally.
I’m hoping this was just a bad effort for Hacker and not a sign of what we can expect the rest of the year.
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