Pittsburgh’s forgotten All-Star Game

On Tuesday, July 16 the 94th Major League Baseball All-Star Game will be played at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

On July 11, 1944, the 12th MLB All-Star Game was played at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field — a little more than a month after the Allied Forces invaded Europe on D-Day.

On the 80th anniversary of that event, we are posting the second story in our two-part series about the ties between baseball and World War II in hopes of reminding Pittsburgh baseball fans of the city’s overshadowed All-Star game.

And the Pirates’ most overlooked All-Star player in team history.

On July 12, 1944, you could buy a copy of the old Pittsburgh Press for a nickel.

You also got a penny back in change.

The headlines on the front page that morning carried the gravitas so many in the United States had come to expect on a daily basis since the Allied invasion of Europe on D-Day 37 days earlier.

“Berlin Admits Red Gains 25 Miles From Prussia” “Yanks Pierce St. Lo Defenses” “Hitler’s Propagandists Preparing for Invasion of Homeland” “Munich Area Hit in Greatest American Raid: 1200 Bombers Strike; South France also Hit” There was no mention of the baseball game played at Forbes Field the night before. You had to turn to page 13 to see that.

That was despite the fact that the contest was the 1944 Major League All-Star Game between the American League and the National League.

By contrast, when fiveyear-old PNC Park hosted the event in 2006, here at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, we splashed a headline that read “Pittsburgh Shines” as it covered three-quarters of the front page with a photo of the sold-out stadium and a cover story about the game.

Sixty-two years earlier, though, even in the host city, MLB’s biggest regular-season showcase had been bumped off the front page of the newspaper given what was happening over two oceans thousands of miles away in two different directions.

Given the nature of those events, it’s somewhat remarkable the game happened at all.

What’s even more remarkable is the story of one of the Pirates who played in it.

A sign of the times Major League Baseball had been given the latitude to operate during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his 1942 “Green Light Letter” to commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis five weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt called baseball a “definite recreational asset” and “thoroughly worthwhile” to Americans as the nation entered the war.

As a result, Major League Baseball plowed ahead through the 1942 and 1943 seasons, crowning the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees as World Series Champions at the end of those two campaigns.

Baseball historian Gary Bedingfield’s “Baseball in Wartime” estimates that roughly 500 Major League players and 4,000 minor league players entered the war. As many as 32 minor leagues folded between 1940 and the end of the conflict in 1945.

But the ‘44 All-Star Game at Forbes Field served a larger goal. Proceeds from the game were distributed to a fund that provided baseball equipment for use in leagues across various branches of the military.

For this story, Pirates team historian Jim Trdinich provided the original letter of agreement between the Pirates and the Baseball Advisory Council of commissioner Landis’ office that Pittsburgh would host the game. Hand typed on the crinkling, old, tan paper, it reads, “The game is played for war and other charities.”

Then those last four words are crossed out in pencil replaced with “…the benefit of the baseball equipment,” via a sub-typed edit.

The cost to raise that money? Box seats went for $4.80. Reserved seats were $3.60. No more than four tickets could be sold together at a time.

On StubHub.com, most box seat tickets for next Tuesday’s game in Texas are at least $1,000.

Attendance for the game was 29,589, totaling $81,275 in receipts. Jan Finkel is a Pittsburgh resident and former chief editor at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He chronicled the 1944 All-Star Game for that platform.

“It was not a full house. That kind of tells you something,” Finkel said during a phone interview. “On the other hand, it wasn’t that easy to get places. To some extent, going to the game itself would have been something of an extravagance. You had gas rationing. Tires were rationed. You had public transportation, but it would have taken serious planning for people to get there.”

To Finkel’s point, those numbers were in line with the 1943 game at Shibe Park in Philadelphia which held 33,000 people at the time and drew 32,000 fans. The ‘42 game at the Polo Grounds in New York held 55,000. It drew just 34,694.

The ‘44 game in Pittsburgh was also played during a heat wave. Temperatures hit 94 degrees in the city that day. It was a late start too. First pitch was at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night, partially to accommodate a national radio broadcast. As Finkel said, it was an effort to hit as many time zones as possible where fans and those serving overseas could hear it, despite some other concerns that may have existed given the era.

“It certainly wasn’t security,” Finkel joked. “There’s nothing brighter than a ballpark at night. I mean, you want to talk about a perfect target?”

The rights were bought for Mutual Broadcasting at the price of $25,000 (by the Gillette Safety Razor Company), which went to the fund. Sportswriters covering the game and even club officials paid full admission.

Forbes Field had hosted night games since 1940. The Pirates were set to play 14 in 1944. When asked if the All-Star game may be the forerunner to expanding a night slate, team president Bill Benswanger said to the Pittsburgh Press, “I see no reason to make any changes.”

The fairy tale of Frankie Zak

By the All-Star break of 1944, rosters were severely depleted. So much so, that the normally rudderless St. Louis Browns would end up winning the American League before losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

Even the Pirates won 90 games that year, finishing second to the Cardinals in the National League. It was their only 90-win season between their World Series appearance years of 1927 and 1960.

Both the Browns and Buccos were the beneficiaries of having a fair amount of established 4-F big league players (potential draftees rejected by the military for reasons of age or “physical, mental, or moral standards”).

Fifteen players were on the roster for the first time as All-Stars. Four Pirates were on the NL squad — pitcher Rip Sewell, outfielder Vince DiMaggio, starting third baseman Bob Elliott and shortstop Frankie Zak.

DiMaggio played but didn’t get a plate appearance, and Elliott went 0 for 3. But Sewell’s infamous “eephus” pitch was sharp. He blooped his way through three scoreless innings as the NL won 7-1.

Zak never got in the game. But there was a good reason for that.

He was never supposed to be there in the first place.

It’s one of the great, little known, stories in Pirates history.

A native of Passaic, N.J., Zak never specialized in baseball. He didn’t like it very much. He was a track athlete who was also good at tennis and football. But he could at least make his way around a diamond.

Gary Cieradkowski is a baseball historian and artist in Kentucky. Some of his work is on display on the club level at PNC Park. He grew up in Zak’s hometown in Jersey. His family knew the Zaks. Cieradkowski chronicled Zak’s life on his website, “The Infinite Baseball Card Set.” It’s an outlet dedicated to some of baseball’s “forgotten heroes.”

The way Cieradkowski tells the story, in 1941, Zak loads up his car with some friends who combined to stuff $30 in their pockets. They drive to North Carolina to see their friend Ed Sudol play in the low-level, Class D Coast Plains league with the Tarboro Orioles.

Upon arrival, Sudol said that the team’s shortstop quit and the Orioles needed Zak to suit up.

“So I played. I went 1 for 3 and didn’t make any errors. (The manager) signed me to a contract after the game, and I stayed,” Zak told the Paterson Morning Call.

The lanky, 5-10 Zak would hit his way to .255 in his first year of organized ball. He was a capable fielder with a good eye and better speed. Once war recruitment took hold after Pearl Harbor, the minor league ranks were so thin, the Pirates signed Zak after his first full professional year. He got a 4-F deferment because of a kidney ailment.

Zak hit .271 in the Class D PONY League in 1942. By 1943, he was in spring training learning how to play shortstop from Hall of Famer Honus Wagner.

Low on power, but big on enthusiasm and hustle, Zak was getting compared to Pee Wee Reese by former Brooklyn Dodgers manager Burleigh Grimes, who was Zak’s manager with the baseball Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League in 1944, a Pirates affiliate.

Western Pennsylvania Sports author and historian David Finoli wrote about Zak’s story for SABR, and says Zak’s energy made him popular with his teammates.

“The players loved this guy. He was a rah-rah, 22-year-old kid,” Finoli said. “He would always run up and down the bench when something happened. Back then, guys weren’t into showing emotion on every play. But Frankie Zak was one of those few players.”

Zak eventually made his Major League debut in 1944. By the All-Star break for the game in his team’s city, the precocious rookie was hitting .305 with a .387 on-base percentage in 44 appearances — often as a pinch-runner or defensive replacement.

He was also stuck in Pittsburgh over the break. With rationing and travel restrictions in place, Zak had nowhere to go.

Meanwhile, the backup shortstop on the NL club was Eddie Miller of the Cincinnati Reds. A native of Mt. Lebanon, Miller was planning to come back to play in the All-Star game in his hometown. Unfortunately, he got injured right before the game. National League manager Billy Southworth (Cardinals) had his own guy from St. Louis, eventual ‘44 MVP Marty Marion, as the starter. But he needed a backup.

Southworth tried to summon Pirates second baseman Pete Coscarart back to Pittsburgh. He was out of town fishing, though. Like Zak, he couldn’t make it back because of travel restrictions.

Fresh out of options, Southworth turned to Zak because, well, he could get to the stadium and had a glove. He was in town. That made him good enough.

So, Frankie Zak, the trackguy, pinch-running rookie who never liked baseball all that much, Forrest Gump-ed his way onto the All-Star team just like he did in Tarboro.

“Frankie Zak was in the right place, right time,” Cieradkowski said.

Yeah. Again. “He wound up batting .300 for the year, playing in 87 games for the Pirates,” Cieradkowski added. “He was a third-string shortstop. But he wasn’t a scrub. He was a legitimate ball player.”

Marion played all nine innings. Zak stayed on the bench. But he did play two more years of Major League Baseball, ending his bigleague career with a .269 batting average.

Oh, and Sudol? Zak’s buddy who tossed him on the team in Tarboro? He never made it as a player in the majors.

He did as an umpire, though. He worked home plate in Jim Bunning’s 1964 perfect game, second base when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record and made the final out call at first base when the Pirates won Game 7 of the 1971 World Series.

You won’t see that again

Despite the war, there were some current and future stars in that game.

Chicago’s Phil Caravetta made his All-Star debut and accomplished two things that we’ll likely never see again in All-Star competition. The Cubs first baseman reached base five times with two hits and three walks. He also managed to get thrown out at home plate twice in the same game.

The Chicago native would go on to the next three All-Star games and would become the 1945 MVP and batting champion for the Cubs.

Caravetta hit in the No. 2 spot, right in front of Donora legend Stan Musial that night. “Stan the Man” had a hit and a sacrifice fly during the game.

The Cardinals Hall of Famer was one of seven players on the diamond who would eventually be enshrined in Cooperstown, along with American Leaguers Bobby Doerr (Boston Red Sox), Hal Newhouser (Detroit Tigers), Lou Boudreau (Cleveland Indians) and Rick Ferrell (Washington Senators). New York Giants slugger Mel Ott and fellow St. Louis Cardinal Joe “Ducky” Medwick joined Musial on the National League side.

The Smog Museum in Donora has a special section dedicated to Musial that includes hundreds of articles related to the Hall of Famer’s MVP career. One of them is a program from the ‘44 game where someone kept score.

There are also letters from Musial when he left MLB to serve in the war in 1945. Already with an MVP under his belt, Musial was sent to Honolulu with a ship repair unit in the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor. There he played in an eight-team league that featured other Major Leaguers.

“(I) See where the Cardinals are keeping in range of first division and may be on top before too long,” Musial wrote to his baseball mentor Joe Barbao on June 18. “Pittsburgh has a very good chance, but their pitching won’t hold up, and I see that Sewell is having a hard time winning this season. You know I’m rooting for the Cards to win, but if they don’t I’ll settle for Pittsburgh and give the local fans a break for a change.”

Feels familiar. Via Finkel at SABR, “One aspect of Musial’s wartime service had an impact on his later career: Since his fellow sailors wanted to see home runs, he made a slight adjustment to his stance that gave him more power. Many a National League pitcher must have wished Musial had spent the war at home.”

Musial had never hit more than 13 homers in a season before serving in 1945. From 1946 until his retirement in 1963, he was held under 13 just once — totaling 439 over those final 18 years of his career.

“Whenever word got out that the Cardinals were in Pittsburgh, every kid in town knew that Stan Musial was coming (to Donora) to spend those two or three days with his mother,” said Brian Charlton of the Donora historical society. “So they would start lining up at her house, and he would start signing baseballs.”

At least it happened In the shadow of war and largely lost in the obscurity of American sports in the era, Forbes Field’s 1944 All-Star Game doesn’t carry with it some of the memories that others in Pittsburgh did thereafter. The ‘59, ‘94 and ‘06 games were all one-run affairs.

The ‘94 game at Three Rivers Stadium is considered one of the best ever thanks to Moises Alou’s 10th inning walk-off hit.

But at least MLB and the Pirates pulled it off. The 1945 game at Boston’s Fenway Park was canceled.

As Lyle Spatz wrote at SABR, “Monroe Johnson, director of the federal Office of Defense Transportation, made a ‘request’ that would force cancellation of the 1945 All-Star Game. Calling it part of the war effort, Johnson asked that all athletic teams, including those in major- league baseball, cut their travel for the coming season by 25%.

Germany would eventually surrender three months after that edict. Five weeks after that game in Boston was scheduled to have been played, Japan surrendered as well.

Broadway producer Mike Todd flirted with the idea of staging the All-Star Game at the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg in August after the defeat of the Germans. MLB’s new commissioner Happy Chandler actually considered the idea. But it was deemed impractical, and MLB staged a few one-off AL-NL games instead.

The All-Star Game returned to Fenway in 1946 with the American League winning 12-0. Boston’s Ted Williams homered twice that day, once off of Sewell’s eephus.

Sewell would go on to claim that was the only time a batter ever homered off the eephus.

As for Zak, according to Cieradkowski, he bounced around the minors for a while and returned to Pittsburgh after retirement, marrying a Pittsburgh girl before relocating his family back to New Jersey. He worked at United Wool until he died in 1972.

“If you just Google Frankie Zak, the first thing that comes up is all these sports places always list him as one of ‘The 10-worst All-Star Game Players of All-Time!’ But they don’t know the whole back story about how he got to the ’44 All-Star Game and why it was important that he was there,” Cieradkowski said. “They just look at his (.269) batting average and rubber stamp him as the worst All-Star player of alltime. But he is not. The story is so much deeper and more interesting than just a throwaway line.” It is. And it’s one Pittsburgh fans should embrace.