The Stratton Story
Right-hander Monty Stratton is a promising pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in the late-1930s.
Wins a team-high 15 games in 1937 and earns a spot on the American League All-Star team. Then wins another team-high 15 games in 1938 for a White Sox team that finishes 18 games under .500.
Stratton is only 26 when he wins his 15th game of the 1938 season, beating the New York Yankees 5-4 in a complete game before a Tuesday afternoon crowd of 2,000 at Comiskey Park.
Turns out that Stratton never throws another pitch in his home ballpark after beating Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig and the rest of the Yankees on Sept. 20, 1938.
Two months and one week later, Stratton is back home near Greenville, Texas, where during an impromptu rabbit hunt he accidentally shoots himself in the right leg when his .22 caliber pistol prematurely discharges.
Stratton, alone at the time, crawls a half-mile or so back to his house and then first is taken 10 miles to a small hospital in Greenville before quickly going to a bigger hospital 50 miles away in Dallas.
The damage is extensive enough that doctors, worrying about gangrene setting in, are forced 85 years ago today to amputate Stratton’s right leg above his knee.
While White Sox owner Lou Comiskey tells Stratton the team has “a job with us as long as he wants,” Stratton has other thoughts.
He wants to pitch again with the help of an artificial leg.
At first, Stratton goes into coaching, but gives up that job to concentrate on pitching again.
And he does in 1946, landing a roster spot with the Sherman Twins in the Class C East Texas League.
He wins his first game for Sherman, striking out 11 batters but also cleanly fielding his position with three assists and taking part in a double play.
The 35-year-old Stratton goes on to win 18 games that season for Sherman with a 4.17 earned-run average.
The league permits a pinch-runner for Stratton whenever he gets on base, which he does 22 times in 1947 for Sherman with eight hits, 13 walks and one hit by pitch.
“Monty,” his wife Ethel tells him, “now all you need to make your life complete is to have Hollywood make a picture about you.”
Enter Jimmy Stewart, who two years later stars in The Stratton Story.
Stratton, who receives $100,000 as the movie’s technical advisor, keeps pitching for a few more seasons in the minors after the movie is released in 1949.
He finally retires in 1953, never having returned to the major leagues but nonetheless seemingly at ease with how his life unfolds.
“Spring comes around and the grass gets green and baseball gets into your blood, I guess,” Stratton tells The Los Angeles Times in 1950 on why he keeps his career alive in the minors.
“A lot of people wanted to see me pitch.”
Jimmy Stewart on set with Monty Stratton