Witness To Diamond History
As Pieper missed just 16 home games during his time with the Cubs, none after 1924, he witnessed virtually all of the great moments in Wrigley Field baseball history. His most treasured moment? “That would be in the spring of 1917 … when our big left hander, Jim (Hippo) Vaughn, and Fred Toney, a right hander for Cincinnati pitched a double no-hitter for nine innings," Pieper recalled. “Somewhere at home I still have a picture of that great afternoon – a photograph of Vaughn, Toney and me.”
“Don’t let anybody tell you the Babe didn’t point to the bleachers before he slammed that homer off Charlie Root,” said Pieper, referring to the 'The Called Shot of 1932. “I know. I had the best seat in the house ... I remember it as if it were yesterday. Guy Bush, one of our best pitchers was on the edge of the Cub dugout screaming ‘You big so and so, he’s got two strikes on you. He’ll get you next time.’ Ruth stepped out of the batter’s box. He definitely pointed toward center field where he planted Root’s next pitch.”
Pieper was on the job when Gabby Hartnett‘s Homer in the Gloamin' helped propel the Cubs to the 1938 National League pennant. "I have always attempted to handle my job as announcer with dignity,” recalled Pieper. “But when I saw Gabby's hit soaring on its way over the left field fence, I picked up the bag of baseballs I keep for umpires and ran to third base to meet him. Then I jogged beside him until he reached home plate. You might say I brought Gabby home. I kept shouting, 'Be sure and touch the plate.' Gabby just smiled. I never saw a man so happy. I was 52 years old then. That was no way for me to behave."
Pieper names Rogers Hornsby as the greatest all-around player he'd seen. “He did everything well: hit, run, field. Hornsby wasn’t a flashy player, just a great who had his head jammed with baseball knowledge. He knew every hitter in the league. He played position on ‘em, and very frequently he was within six inches of where the ball was hit." Pieper regarded the Cubs infield with Billy Jurges, Billy Herman and Phil Cavarretta as more proficient than the legendary Tinker, Evers and Chance. "I pick them because the rabbit ball has made the job of the infielders much, much tougher than it was in 1906."
Read more about this topic: Pat Pieper
Famous quotes containing the words witness to, witness, diamond and/or history:
“Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chronicled ... never before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweller, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)