Tuesday Trivia: The final pitch
Left-hander Eddie Plank delivers the first pitch in the first game at Philadelphia’s sparkling new Shibe Park on April 12, 1909.
Plank’s first pitch for the Philadelphia Athletics comes shortly after 3 p.m. to Boston Red Sox leadoff hitter Amby McConnell.
A couple of hours later, Plank retires Harry Lord for the final out of Philadelphia’s 8-1 victory before a Monday afternoon crowd of 30,162.
Eddie Plank
The victory is Plank’s first of 19 that season for the Athletics, as well as the 168th in a Hall of Fame career that ends in 1917 with 326 victories.
Which brings us to today’s installment of Tuesday Trivia, which has nothing to do with Plank or the Philadelphia Athletics.
The question actually is generated 51 years after Plank’s first pitch — and comes from the final moment in the final season of that once grand ballpark, which by then is known as Connie Mack Stadium.
By then, by the end of the 1970 season, the A’s of a half-century earlier are long gone, having relocated first in 1955 to Kansas City and then in 1968 to Oakland.
When the A’s leave town after the 1954 season, the Philadelphia Phillies become the sole tenant of old Shibe Park, which a couple of years earlier is renamed Connie Mack Stadium in honor of the Athletics’ legendary manager.
The Phillies stay at Connie Mack Stadium through the 1970 season.
A span of 22,452 days comes between Eddie Plank’s first pitch there in 1909 and the final pitch there on the night of Oct. 1, 1970.
Today’s question: Who throws that final pitch at Connie Mack Stadium?
We can wait.
And wait.
And then wait just a little longer until you come up with the name of right-hander Howie Reed, a relief pitcher with the Montreal Expos who allows the game-winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning of the Phillies’ 2-1 victory on Oct. 1, 1970.
Reed is in his second inning of relief in the bottom of the 10th when Tim McCarver singles to center field with two outs.
McCarver promptly steals second base and scores as Oscar Gamble follows with another single to center.
The end comes at 10:31 p.m. before Thursday night crowd of 31,822.
Six months later, Reed again becomes an unwitting part of Philadelphia baseball history as he allows the first grand slam in the Phillies’ new ballpark, Veterans Stadium.
That piece of history comes in the fifth inning on April 11, 1971, when Roger Freed – the first batter Reed faces in relief of Expos starter Carl Morton – launches a pitch deep over the left-field wall to push the Phillies’ lead from 3-1 to 7-1.
Philadelphia eventually beats Montreal 11-4 on the day after opening the Vet with a 4-1 victory over the Expos.