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13 of the most extraordinary baseball games of all time

Over the past nearly 100 years, a baker's dozen worth of outrageous major league baseball games.

8. Aug. 24, 1951: Fans call the shots in St. Louis Browns victory

AL BEHRMAN/AP

  • By Ross Atkin Contributor

The St. Louis Browns defeat the Philadelphia A’s, 5-3.

In yet another of his many promotional schemes, Bill Veeck, who was then owner the American League’s St. Louis Browns, decided to make fans the team’s manager of the day. Regular manager Zack Taylor was relegated to a rocking chair in the grandstand, where 1,115 fans of the 3,925 on hand at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park were designated to vote throughout the game on various managerial decisions by holding up “yes” or “no” placards. The participating fans were those who’d voted for the Browns’ starting lineup in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The Browns snapped a four-game losing streak, but then proceeded to lose their next six games.

Additional facts:

- This game was played just five days after Veeck had arranged for Eddie Gaedel, a 3 ft., 7 in. dwarf,  to bat against Detroit.

- In balloting, the fans replaced the normal starters with Sherm Lollar and Hank Arft. Lollar got three hits, including the game winner, while Arft collected two hits.

- During the game, the fans elected to stick with starting pitcher Ned Garver even after  he gave up hits to the first six A’s batters. Garver survived the rough start and gave up only two more hits. 

- Despite concerns about how fan polling would slow things down, the game was one of the Browns’ shortest of the season, lasting only 2 hours and 11 minutes.   

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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