Ex-Starter Goes Into Relief Work

If I were to put to you that Ralph Branca was the answer to what baseball trivia question, you’d be sure you knew. “Oh, yeah,” you’d answer. “Who was the pitcher who threw the you-know-what to you-know-who in the playoff game between the Giants and Dodgers in 1951?” The most famous gopher ball in baseball history. The home run heard round the world, the little miracle of Coogan’s Bluff.

Not this time. That’s not what I had in mind. The correct answer is, Ralph Branca is the first president of a baseball organization known by the acronym BAT. It stands for Baseball Alumni Team. What it really stands for is faith, hope and charity.

What it is, in effect, is the ultimate pinch-hitting organization. It goes to BAT for guys who can’t handle the curveballs and knucklers that life throws them, any more, guys who stand there with the bat on their shoulders and get called out.

Consider the case of a player who once made one of the most-famous catches in World Series history. It became famous in prose and diagram as artists tracked the trajectory and velocity of the drive which went into the lore of the game.

He never was a big star. The Catch was his Big Moment in baseball, almost his only moment. He never made the big money, he never even made the starting lineup most of the time. But he was there that day.

This player went from World Series hero to a guy living in a one-room apartment over a garage, broke and about to have a leg amputated because of a progressive disease. He never could get a good jump on the fly balls that came his way in that real World Series which begins the day you hang them up and climb out of your youth.

BAT, so to say, batted for him. And came up with the key hit--the money necessary for medical bills, rent and living expenses till he could get back on his, well, foot. This is done anonymously, even surreptitiously, although ballplayers, too proud to appeal to public agencies, are usually willing enough to accept it from their own.

There was a pitcher who once won 66 games in 3 consecutive years, who pitched in 4 World Series but who couldn’t even get the side out in that other tournament which always goes into extra innings on you. His life savings wiped out by a catastrophic illness of his wife’s, he fell desperately ill himself and, alone and broke, he was rescued by BAT, which paid for four operations for him and kept a roof over his head.

There was the World Series pitcher who never could cope with the demons that drove him and, beset by back problems and mental problems, had to be bailed out of mortgage payments and righted in his personal life by funds from BAT.

There was the pitcher who won 55 games in 2 years and was out of baseball in 2 years and in prison a few years after that. A fastball is not much help out on the mean streets. He was not a victim. But his wife and children were. BAT came to their aid.

I bring this up because, Sunday at Anaheim Stadium, the soap company that is helping to fund Branca’s organization will distribute to Angel fans in attendance the Surf Baseball Card Collectibles book, a year-by-year catalogue of past Angel bubblegum cards together with reprints in chronological order.

The company turns the overruns over to BAT for sale, 56,000 last year, and since these become collectors’ items, they are worth anywhere from $10 to $15 a copy. You have to understand baseball card collecting has become a mania.

It’s no longer just a kids’ game. It is the poor man’s philately. It has become like stamp collecting, in which history plays a part in determining value. Just as in stamp-collecting, a goof at the printer can be valuable. A postage showing an airplane flying upside-down or sporting an imperfect dye job can command millions. A bubblegum card purporting to show a Ben Chapman but showing a Sam Chapman is considered a prize. So is one showing Lew Burdette as a left-handed pitcher. The mixups are merry. A player named J.C. Martin and Gary Peters get on the wrong cards. Maybe only their mothers would know, but in the little world of card-collecting, mistakes like that can be worth bucks. A complete set of 1952 cards (Mickey Mantle’s rookie year) lists for $25,000.

No one knows what motivates card collectors any more than what motivates coin collectors. A desire to link up with the past, a need for a hobby, pride of ownership of a thing there’s only one of, or a few of, in the world.

Whatever drives them, the collectibles book is one of their Bibles. Ralph Branca and BAT hope the craze continues.

Ralph might have let that save get away from him when he grooved one for Bobby Thomson all those years ago. But he’s racked up a lot more important saves since. He should be remembered for these pitches.