I try not to break the rules, but merely to test their elasticity
A fair approximation of Joe DiMaggio's classic style
Eddie Gaedel emerged from a flying saucer parked inside Comiskey Park, leading a group of three other men of similar stature. The quartet wore sunglasses and round helmets perched atop rubber suits. They alternately carried baseball bats and toy ray guns. A trio of metal cylinders on their backs served, ostensibly, as either air tanks or jetpacks.
The men captured infielders Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio — the White Sox’s shortest players that year. Negotiations ensued, during which Gaedel quipped, “Don’t bother taking me to your leader, I’ve already met him.” The talks, it seems, were successful. The White Sox went on to beat Cleveland 5-1.
It was his final on-field appearance, four years before his death at age 36 from tragic circumstances befitting a brief, tragic life. By the accounts of all of those who knew him, Gaedel, never had it particularly easy.
Over the years, team owner Bill Veeck employed him around field in a factotum of jobs, invariably revolving around insensitive allusions to his 3’7 height. Two months before Gaedel passed, he and seven other little people were hired to sell concessions after box seat ticket holders complained that vendors were blocking their view. “I try not to break the rules,” the eccentric owner said of his flare for promotional antics,
“but merely to test their elasticity.”
The Sox were the fourth Major League team that operated under Veeck’s control, following the ownership of the Triple-A Milwaukee Brewers and attempted purchase of the Philadelphia Phillies. It was Veeck’s second MLB team, the St. Louis Browns, however, with which Gaedel would make his first — and most-enduring — mark on the game.
Before ever setting foot on a professional baseball diamond at age 26, he’d worked as an airplane riveter during the Second World War. His size afforded him the ability to crawl inside the plane’s wings to finish the job. A year after the war ended, he found work as "Little Eddie the Mercury Man,” donning a military side cap with wings resembling those worn by the Roman god who gave the label its name.
Veeck’s antics were in full-effect in 1951, as the owner attempted to get butts in seats for a dismal season that would culminate in a 52-102 record. The August 19 doubleheader against the Tigers offered a barrage for the senses. During the intermission between games, there was a classic car show on the field and a parade of motorcycles.
Clown Prince of Baseball Max Patkin performed, while Browns pitcher Satchel Paige played drums for an on-field band. The Negro League legend was 45 at the time. He would throw his final game for the Kansas City A’s some 14 years later. The finale came as Gaedel emerged from a seven-foot-high papier-mâché birthday cake sitting on home plate.
As far as Veeck spectacles went, however, that last bit left the press wanting.
They were considerably more impressed when Gaedel entered the game at the bottom of the first, pinch hitting for leadoff batter, Frank Saucier. The rookie sported a Browns jersey bearing the number 1/8. Veeck, who had signed Gaedel to a $15,400 contract, gave him strict orders not to swing. The owner told his player that he had taken a $1 million life insurance policy out and positioned a sniper on the roof of the stadium, prepared to shoot if he took a swing.
Gaedel was also instructed to crouch at the plate, reducing his strike zone to a reported 1.5 inches. This last bit, however, was abandoned when the batter entered the game, instead taking a stance Veeck would later call, “a fair approximation of Joe DiMaggio's classic style.” He walked on four pitches, his bat having never left his shoulder. When outfielder Jim Delsing was called in pinch run, Gaedel slapped his teammate on the ass and said “good luck.”
He hammed it up for a few moments more, lifted his arms and took a final bow for the crowd, before entering the dug after his solitary major league at bat. "For a minute,” Gaedel told the press after the game, “I felt like Babe Ruth.” His contract was voided soon after the game, and the shortest player to ever bat in the major league was paid a prorated fee of $100 for his appearance.
The Browns lost 6-2.
Sources:
Today in White Sox History: May 26 https://www.si.com/mlb/whitesox/history/today-in-white-sox-history-may-26
Bill Veeck, Eddie Gaedel and the Birth of a Legend https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/stories/inside-pitch/bill-veeck-eddie-gaedel-the-birth-of-a-legend
Eddie Gaedel https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/eddie-gaedel/