Claude Passeau: The Pitcher Who Didn’t Like Baseball

Claude Passeau may be the only pitcher who ever won a World Series game but didn’t like baseball until he was in his twenties – and then only because it was the best-paying job he could find.

Despite that, he was an old-fashioned workhorse; in 12 full seasons with the Pirates, Phillies and Cubs (1936-1947), he averaged over 15 complete games and 227 innings pitched, with a high of 292 in 1937.

Passeau is also the game’s greatest nemesis for minor league researchers; he played under so many different names, even he could not remember them all. (Not to mention that the spelling of his “real” name kept changing with the whims of family members, including himself).

Camellias and azaleas were in bloom, yellow finches were at the feeders, redbirds and quail flew by as he and his wife met us and invited us into their home in Lucedale, Mississippi, on January 27, 1993. She then excused herself -- “I’ve heard these stories before.” – Norman L. Macht

My people came from Alsace-Lorraine, France. They came to Escatawba, Mississippi, across the river to a community called Passeauques and that was too long so they cut it to Passeau. People couldn’t understand that, so my grandmother said, “I’ll settle that,” and spelled it Passo.

In my second or third year in college, I changed it back to Passeau. No legalities were involved.

My father was a sawyer in a sawmill. I was born in 1909 in Waynesboro, Mississippi.  In those days they moved the sawmills around to the trees, not the other way around. Every little town had a baseball team.

High School Days

In high school, we only had 12 boys and I was number 12. And when somebody was out, I played third base, outfield. Never did get around to pitching until my senior year and I pitched a few games and we won the Southern Division State High School championship and got beat in the state championship.

But I wasn’t interested in playing baseball.

All I wanted to do was hunt turkeys, geese quail, and fish.

When I was 14 I was going fishing with my brother one day, driving along this bumpy country road. He had put his .38 pistol on the seat under him with his coat over it. He said to me, “Take that gun out from under me,” and I did and it went off, right through my left hand. 

I tried to get in the navy when I was 16. I told them I was 18. They wouldn’t take me, said I couldn’t even shave.

Millsaps College

I went to Millsaps College – about 900 students -- at no cost and a little on the side and during my freshman year I played football and basketball. It was all in the same dressing room; when I turned in my football uniform I got my basketball uniform. I didn’t go out for baseball. I wanted to be a football coach.

I didn’t want to work. I thought school teaching would be ideal. After my freshman year some of my studies were just eating me up. I was always so tired. I played football and basketball and ran the 440 and threw the javelin on the track team for a month or so and finally just quit track. 

It was understood that if you weren’t playing some athletics, you would be sweeping out the dorm or waiting on tables in the cafeteria, and one day the coach said to me, “Why aren’t you out for baseball?” I told him, “Coach, I don’t play baseball.” He said, “Yes, you do. I saw you play in the state championships.” I had played center field in one game.

So I went out for baseball. I was just like all hard-headed youngsters. I didn’t want to, didn’t like it. So I just went out in the outfield and dogged it. I wouldn’t even take batting practice. Finally the coach got disgusted with me and had me pitch batting practice. I acted like I didn’t know how to stand on the mound or anything, just to get out of playing.

I didn’t want to be there so I started throwing hard and the hitters didn’t like that. We had two starting pitchers and were losing games and he would put me in as a relief pitcher.

Life in the Minor Leagues

After my freshman year I couldn’t find a job, so I went up to the Delta and played semi-pro ball, which students weren’t supposed to do.

A Detroit scout, Eddie Goosetree, kept after me to sign and I kept telling him, “I just don’t like baseball. Only reason I’m playing here is I can’t get a job doing anything else.” He said, “Well, my job is to sign you, even if you don’t report.” Now $350 a month was a good contract in those days. I signed under the name Passo.

This was all illegal. I played under the name Jones for a few months – all Class C and D – played for two or three paydays and quit and went to another team under a different name. I played from Montreal to Mexico City. I believe I played under the name Newman in the Western League.

In the Carolina League a boy walked up to me one day and said, “What’s your name?” I told him whoever I was then. He said, “I coulda sworn I played against you last year and your name was something else.” I was playing under so many different names 1929-30-31, sometimes I really had difficulty remembering who I was. 

I believe it was my first year in the major leagues I got a letter from the president of the minor leagues: “Will you please make up your mind what name you’re going to play under? All our records are messed up.”

I was still the property of the Detroit club when I graduated in 1932. They sent me to Decatur in the Three-I League. After thirty-two days the league broke up. Then they sent me to Moline. The next year at Beaumont in the Texas League they tried to change the way I threw. The changes threw off my control. 

Now I was just pitching. But I never learned how to throw a curveball. Never. Best I could do was what I called a spinner.  Broke about four inches.

All I ever used was an overhand fastball – made it drop or sail a little bit, some change-up. Location. That was it. The ball came off my middle finger. End of a game it was raw.  For years hitters complained that I was throwing a spitter, Commissioner Landis even called me to his office one time to talk about the complaints and warn me that if I was doing it, I would be suspended.

But I wasn’t using it and nobody ever found any evidence that I was.

In 1935 I went to spring training with Milwaukee and they released me.  Des Moines offered me $250 a month. I wanted 300. I said, “I’ll stay a month and if I’m not worth 300, release me.”  I stayed and got the 300. I was 20-11. That’s where I became friends with a young radio broadcaster – Ronald Reagan. 

Now I’m 26 years old and decided that was my last year. Eating hamburgers and riding buses was not for me.

Pirates to Phillies to Cubs

Then Pittsburgh bought me.  The Pirates had an older team and I’m a rookie. The clubhouse boy led me to a locker in a corner. One player came over to me and held out his hand and said, “I’m Paul Waner.”  I rose up about that high. After that, whenever a young fellow joined our club, I made it a point to go over and introduce myself to him.

After I got into one game they made me the throw-in in a deal with the Phillies. The owner, Gerry Nugent, was a fine fellow, but he had no money. I made $3,000 my first big league year, the next year $4,500. In two years I pitched in 99 games. With the Phillies I asked for number 13. I tried chewing tobacco; damn near killed me when I swallowed it in a game.

Because of my being shot in the left hand, some fingers were drawn up and I had to put my glove on slowly one finger at a time. So I had them make me a smaller glove.  I practiced my fielding extra because of it.  And I would rub the ball in my glove rather than in my hands.

One day Bill Terry came out to umpire Bill Klem and complained about it.  I said, “Mr. Klem, I’ve got a crippled hand and if I take the ball out of the glove and rub it, I’m slow enough as it is. We’ll never get through the game.” I showed him my crippled hand. That was the end of that.

The Phillies traded me to the Cubs in May 1939. I reported to them in Brooklyn. And they started me.  Gabby Hartnett was the manager. In the meetings he’d tell the pitcher how to pitch to each man. I’d faced Brooklyn before and knew the hitters and they knew me.

They knew I didn’t have a curve and I couldn’t throw my little spinner outside. So Hartnett is telling me to throw curves down and away to left-hand batters.

He gets down five or six left-hand batters that way and finally I said, “Skipper, I just can’t pitch that way.” I struck out a bunch and we won the game and afterward Hartnett says to me, “When I tell you how to pitch to hitters, don’t pay any attention to me.”

I had a good year, 20-11 with a 2.50 ERA. I went up to see the owner, Mr. Wrigley, and we talked about sailboats and airplanes. Finally he said, “I know you didn’t come up here to talk about that.”  I said, “Mr. Wrigley, I’d like to sign my contract before I go home. I don’t want to go home in doubt.  I won 20 games.” I’m thinking maybe I’ll get a $500 raise.

We always had beer in the clubhouse. I’d drink one or two after a game, but that was the extent of my drinking. I said, “You never have to worry about me being ready to pitch.” I got through telling him about my pluses and he said, “You forgot about one thing. You lost 11.”

Brushback Pitches

I pitched everybody inside and didn’t give up many home runs.  When I was pitching I didn’t talk to anybody and nobody talked to me on the bench. My catcher on the Cubs, Clyde McCullough, said when I was out there I was the meanest SOB he ever saw.

I didn’t care if I hit a batter or not and they all knew it. Nobody ever came at me out on the mound ‘cause they knew if they did, the next game they would get it worse. Leo Durocher was always on me. Once he was set to bunt and I threw the ball right at him.

The ball hit the bat and then him. One day I wound up and threw it right into the dugout where he was. To hold a man on first, I just stood there and held the ball till he relaxed and he’d lost a step that way.

When I was being relieved, I never left the mound until the reliever arrived. I wanted to hand him the ball myself. Nobody else did that.

I never took the game home. Win or lose 1-0 was all the same. When I left the ballpark I was in a different world.

1941 All-Star Game

[In the 1941 All-Star Game, Passeau threw the pitch that Ted Williams hit for the game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth. Could he still see that pitch?]

I see it every time somebody asks me about it. I had pitched two hard games on Thursday and Sunday before going to Detroit on Tuesday not expecting to play at all. Reds manager Bill McKechnie is the All-Star manager. He says to me, “Passeau, you’ll pitch the seventh and eighth.” I was dead tired.

But I went out and pitched the seventh and eighth. [The NL Led, 5-4.] Then I headed for the clubhouse.  McKechnie says to me, “Don’t go in. Go ahead and pitch the ninth.”

I went out there and grit my teeth.  [With two on and two out] Williams hit a fly ball that dropped into the overhang of the upper deck. I just stuck my glove in my pocket and walked off the field.

 In 1943 we had Eddie Stanky, a little gamecock second baseman, and Lou Novikoff, the mad Russian. Stanky didn’t get along with anybody. We left him alone. Opening day Rip Sewell was pitching; he couldn’t crack a window. Stanky’s leading off. Second pitch Rip hit him on top of the head. Stanky fell over.

Hack, batting second, and the umpire looked at him and didn’t help him in any way. Our trainer didn’t even come off the bench to see if he was all right. Stanky’s on the ground two or three minutes. That’s what we thought of him. I just didn’t like his ways. I guess in his way he was a nice fellow. It just wasn’t my way.

One of Stanky’s boys in Mobile wound up marrying my niece.

One day I’m pitching and Novikoff’s playing left field and a fly ball was hit to him and he’s charging back toward the fence and turns and the ball lands way in front of him. When the inning was over I said to him, “Lou, there’s a little girl in the stands can play left field better than you.”

I finally got to like the game a little for the simple reason when I was at home I worked like a slave from 5:30 or 6 in the morning to 11 at night. I had some land and we didn’t have machines to clean up underbrush and I wanted to farm some of it and we did it by hand and that was hard.

So when I went to spring training I was going on vacation. That’s the only reason I liked baseball. But I gave it my best.

In 1945 I had bone chips in my elbow. Little pieces of cartilage would chip off. I never had an operation. 

World Series One-Hitter

[The Cubs lost the 1945 seven-game World Series to Detroit. Passeau won Game 3, 3-0. Rudy York’s second-inning single was the Tigers’ only hit.]  I didn’t know I had a one-hitter, just knew we had the lead. [The Cubs had acquired right-hander Hank Borowy from the Yankees in mid-season.]

Borowy was a frail fellow. Good curve ball. Could go five innings and that’s all. He pitched in games 5 and 6 and we were surprised when [Cubs manager] Charlie Grimm started him in game 7.

In February 1947 I had a back operation. They trimmed a few discs. I thought I was through. I had some therapy and in August I was pitching. I was making about $18,000. Then the Cubs released me. 

I missed the game a little but not the traveling. I missed the paydays mostly.

I managed in the low minors for the Cubs at Centralia and Visalia, had two last-place teams, then quit. I couldn’t put up with half-hearted boys who wouldn’t work. 

Later my poker pals put me up to running for sheriff here. I was elected twice, 1967-1975. Domestic disturbances mostly. Half the time I didn’t even carry a gun.