He
was the only player in the history of baseball to make it to the Major Leagues
from Class E minor league ball. Not bad, considering the lowest official designation
in the game has always been Class D.
He was a thirty-six-year-old rookie when he broke into the
Majors, a right-handed pitcher from small town America whose spotlight moment
came in front of 30,000 fans on June 27, 1945 at Ebbets
field in the heart of
Brooklyn, New York. That was the night Ernie Rudolph was credited with the only win of his career, a 6–5 victory
over the Chicago
Cubs. Ten
days later his playing career was over.
Part longshot legend, part haunting tale of
fleeting fame, the story of Ernie Rudolph reads like another obscure player immortalized
in the film Field of Dreams.
In
case you forgot or didn’t know, Archibald “Moonlight” Graham was a young
outfielder called up by the New York Giants in 1905, finally getting his chance
to play in a Major League game on June 29 when he was sent in as a replacement
for the team’s right fielder in the bottom of the eighth inning. No fly balls
came his way and
he never even touched the ball.
Then in the top of the ninth he was on deck waiting
to get his first big league at bat when the last out was made and the game was
over. Soon thereafter he was sent back down to the minors, never to have
another chance at Major League glory. But all ended well for Archie Graham as he
went on instead to became a small-town doctor who lived and prospered for the
rest of his days in Chisholm, Minnesota.
It was that short-lived big league career that
would later come to stand as the perfect male metaphor for life’s unfulfilled
promise.
“It was
like coming this close to your dreams, and then watch them brush by you like a
stranger in a crowd.”
–
Burt Lancaster as “Moonlight” Graham in Field
of Dreams
Then there was Ernie Rudolph. Born in 1909 in Black River
Falls, Wisconsin, he first drew attention as the young hurler for the Black
River Falls Merchants, the city-sponsored amateur team. One local sportswriter
in the 1930s colorfully called him “one of the slickest applechuckers outside
of organized ball.”
As
for that one-of-a-kind Class E designation, Rudolph started his career in the
unheralded Twin Ports League, comprised of four minor league teams from Duluth,
Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin. According to Baseball
America's Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, many
of the players in the Twin Ports League worked in the local war production factories,
dockyards and shipyards. Things didn’t work out on the business side, however,
and the lone E-class league in baseball history folded after six weeks in 1943.
Ernie was the only one who made it out of there to the Majors.
After
the Twin Ports League he bounced around in the minors and semi-pro circuits for
a few years—through the Depression and better part of World War Two— with teams
like the Crookston Pirates and the Eau Claire Bears. Until 14 wins and a 2.88
ERA in 1944 with the St. Paul Saints of the American Association brought him to
the attention of Branch Rickey, Jr., the farm director for the National
League’s Brooklyn Dodgers.
Rickey’s
father was, of course, Branch Rickey, the legendary Dodgers’ general manager who
signed Jackie Robinson to his first professional contract in October of 1945 and
forever changed the game. Five months earlier Branch Rickey, Jr. was travelling
to Black River Falls to sign Ernie Rudolph to a professional contract of his
own.
Fame
and immortality followed, some say hounded, Jackie Robinson for his entire
career and the rest of his life. Not so Ernie Rudolph.
Ernie
joined the Dodgers that June and wound up pitching in seven games, all in
relief. In 8.2 innings
he struck out 3 and walked 7, carrying a 5.19 ERA. Not exactly eye-popping numbers.
In those seven games he never had an official at-bat, though he did twice draw
a base on balls. But still, there was that win on a warm June night in Ebbets
Field, and nobody could ever take that away from him.
Once his playing days were done, he stayed in
baseball for a while, scouting for the Milwaukee Braves and St. Louis Browns
before hanging up his spikes for good. He went home to Black River Falls where
he raised a family and quietly lived out the rest of his days in peace. He died
in 2003 at the age of 93 and was laid to rest in Riverside Cemetery.
(Another Major League baseball player from
Black River Falls, Phil Haugstad, is also laid to rest in Riverside Cemetery.
In a crazy set of coincidences, he too was a relief pitcher who made his debut
with the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1947, two years after Ernie. During that first
year Haugstad appeared in only six games and his record was an identical 1-0.)
According
to his obituary printed in the Madison
Capital Times, Rudolph “quit the team in a dispute with
the late Leo Durocher.” Whatever the reason, the fact remains the Dodgers
let him go ten days after his greatest triumph and he never got another chance
to pitch in the majors.
Life
and baseball. Anybody who knows anything about either knows it isn’t always
fair and it sure as hell isn’t easy.
And
while it’s true some, if not most, of life’s dreams aren’t meant to come true,
the story of Ernie Rudolph, much like that of “Moonlight” Graham, offers
comfort by showing us that in the end, well, that’s okay.
There’s worse things that could happen.
.
-end-
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