A Second Cuppa’ Coffee

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who sent me a Birthday video or e-mail or text message to wish me a Happy 86th Birthday. It was very touching and greatly appreciated.

My family turned it into a joyous Zoom presentation where I saw so many greetings from friends, both new and old. My kids are tech savvy and my grandson is a whiz on computers and the result was a video scrapbook that we’ll enjoy forever as a family heirloom. Thank you. Coach.

This week’s Coach’s Corner is a sequel to a story I did eight years ago on these pages but now updated due to more information I recently discovered. That story was called “A Cuppa’ Coffee.”

This one is entitled “A Second Cuppa’ Coffee.”

A Second Cuppa’ Coffee

When a minor leaguer is called up to the parent club for a short time, baseball parlance describes that moment of glory as the player having “a cuppa’ coffee” in the big leagues.

An honorary distinction, it is recognized by appreciative baseball fans to describe men who dreamed of playing Major League Baseball and made it, if only for the briefest of times. Earl Mossor was such a player.

Earl had returned from World War II and spent a few years playing minor league baseball, hoping for a chance.

Earl got his “cuppa’ coffee” with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, the year Brooklyn lost the pennant to the hated New York Giants on the season’s final day.

Earl had pitched well in a spring training game against the Yankees, earning him the call-up in late April as a relief pitcher for Brooklyn.

Earl achieved a singular honor in his short time in the major leagues.  Appearing in just three games as a relief pitcher, he batted only once, but got a single.

And on the mound, he struck out only one batter, but what a strikeout it was.

Stan “The Man” Musial, two-for-four that day with a double and a triple and four runs batted in, came up with two men on base in the eighth inning and struck out swinging on a full-count breaking ball in front of a packed house in Brooklyn.

Earl later wrote to a friend what that one strikeout meant to him.

“I had never even seen this guy before let alone pitch against him. ……Stan Musial. I said to myself I can’t run in the dugout and hide. I have to pitch to him. ….here is a guy making $100,000 a year and I am making $10,000 and I am supposed to get him out. Ha! ……Anyway I worked the count to 3-2 on him and threw him a big change-up curve, and ducked. He missed it by about 2 feet so I was about the happiest boy in the world. I struck out “Stan The Man” the first time I ever saw him.”

Earl had the unique distinction of batting a career perfect 1.000 in joining an elite club of only eighty-four other players who got a hit in their only at-bat in Major League Baseball history.

He also struck out arguably the greatest hitter in the history of the National League, Stan “The Man” Musial.

In the first game he played for Brooklyn, he came in to relieve the starting pitcher in the very first inning. Earl allowed what would turn out to be the winning run. After a couple of more appearances, he was sent back down to the minor leagues.

The Rest of the Story…

That year, the Dodgers and Giants finished the season tied for the National League pennant, necessitating a best two out of three playoff for the right to play in the World Series.

Leo Durocher, the Giant’s manager and a scurrilous figure if ever there was one, had designed a system of signs so the Giant batters knew what the pitch was going to be, creating a huge advantage at the plate.

Confessions to these unfair acts surfaced in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago as long retired Giants confirmed the cheating, and in fact were quite proud of it.

A Giants coach with a telescope would aim at the catcher’s fingers, telling the pitcher what type of pitch to throw, giving the Giants players a great advantage. The coach then pressed a buzzer to the bullpen where a player would either hold a baseball in his hand or toss it up to signify either a fast ball or a breaking ball was coming.

Rules are applied to sports to level the playing field. Cheating from grade school to professional sports is the antithesis of fair play.

That one game where Earl Mossor allowed the winning run may well have been tainted by sign stealing. Had he held that lead when he came in to relieve, and the season played out the way that it did, the Dodgers would’ve won the pennant and gone on to the World Series.

In total, Earl played thirteen years of professional baseball, wearing the uniforms of fifteen different teams ranging from Caracas to Montreal and Florida to Oregon, continually searching for his own field of dreams.

Because the Giants cheated him out of a win, Earl never got that call for a second trip back to the big leagues.

Given his military WWII service to his country and his love of the game of baseball, I think MLB should place a memorial stone next to his final resting place in Mount Moriah, Ohio, reading “Earl Mossor Is Enjoying A Second Cuppa’ Coffee in Baseball Heaven”