Ernie Lombardi: Unlikely Hall of Famer
Ask any serious baseball fan today to name five catchers in the Hall of Fame, and it’s likely that none of them would include Ernie (who?) Lombardi. They probably never heard of him.
And that’s a shame, because this 17-year .306 hitter was unique and deserves to be remembered.
A product of the fertile San Francisco playground baseball program, he grew to be 6-foot-3 and weigh 230, He had hands big enough to hold five baseballs.
He broke in with Brooklyn in 1931 and spent the next 10 years with Cincinnati, followed by a year with the Braves and his last five with the New York Giants.
In his time he swung the most powerful bat, had the strongest arm, and was the slowest runner in baseball.
The Batter
Rex Barney was a rookie pitcher with the Dodgers in 1943:
“The first time we played the Giants in 1943 and Lombardi came up to bat I couldn’t believe it. There was nobody in the infield. They were all on the grass, down the lines or in right and left center field. And they threw him out at first from there. The pitcher had to cover first.”
“Lom swung a big bat, gripped it at the end, his last two fingers off the bat. One day Kirby Higbe threw him a fastball and all I heard was crack-crack – the bat hitting the ball and the ball hitting the seats. Both cracks echoed before he even got out of the batter’s box. The guys on the bench said he did it all the time.”
“But he beat the shift on September 5 against us, when he beat out a bunt. I saw it or I would not believe it.”
Ernie Lombardi had one of the most powerful swings in baseball
Lombardi consistently hit 10 to 20 home runs a year – 190 in all. But he was essentially a line drive hitter. Had he been a lofter, he might easily have hit two or three times that number. He hit over .300 10 times, and struck out an average of 16 times a year.
The Baserunner
Pee Wee Reese once said of Lombardi: “He runs like a turtle with arthritis.” Yet he was considered a good baserunner who knew how far he could go without being tagged out or caught in a rundown. But it might take three singles to get him home from first…
Triples are usually the domain of speedy runners, yet he hit 27 of them – one-third of those in his second year, and the last when he was 38, at the Polo Grounds in New York which, with its vast center field reaching over 500 feet, was probably the only place where a drive that got past an outfielder would roll long enough to enable him to reach third.
Pee Wee Reese said of Lombardi: “He runs like a turtle with arthritis.”
Lombardi had 8 stolen bases, and was caught stealing 9 times. His last stolen base was on July 10, 1943, in New York, when he was 35.
It may have been a case of indifference by Cubs pitcher Lon Warneke; it came in the eighth inning with the Giants leading, 9-2, or the failure of the Cubs’ wartime second-string catcher Chico Hernandez to get off a throw to second.
Four times he led the league in grounding into double plays, setting a record with 32 that would last into the twenty-first century.
The Catcher
Shortstop Dick Bartell played against him for 15 years and with him on the Giants in 1943.
“He was big and slow and awkward but he could reach. Sometimes he caught pitches wide on the first-base side of the plate barehanded and whipped a throw down to first.”
“Pitchers complained that it made them look like they had nothing on the ball; he didn’t even shake his hand. He probably picked off more men at first than any other catcher, snapping that sidearm brick down there without the rest of him stirring.”
“He couldn’t get up quickly to throw to second on attempted steals, so he just threw without getting up. When he threw sidearm it was a heavy ball, like a brick. The second baseman or shortstop had to be set to catch it. But when he threw overhand it was light as a feather.”
Ernie Lombardi caught 123 games and led the NL, batting .342.
“Even when he threw back to the pitcher, it was sometimes harder than the pitcher threw it, even while he was still crouching. He didn’t have to rise to throw sidearm to first.
Going after a foul popup, if he was getting near the screen, he would slide to catch it.
Nobody was better at blocking the plate. If he had the ball you had to slide around him or just bounce off. Catchers who come out in front of the plate to take a throw have to turn and lunge for the runner to make the tag. Lombardi stayed on the plate and let the ball come to him.”
Pennant winners usually have an anchor in a strong handler of pitchers behind the plate. In 1938 Lombardi was voted the NL MVP as the Reds rose from the cellar in ’37 to fourth on their way to pennants the following two years behind 20-game winners Paul Derringer and Bucky Walters.
He caught 123 games and led the NL, batting .342. He was behind the plate calling the pitches when 23-year-old lefthander Johnny Vander Meer threw his consecutive no-hitters. The Reds were swept by the Yankees in the 1939 World Series but beat Detroit in seven games in 1940.
The Man
Ernie Lombardi was an easygoing, affable man and it was a good thing, because he bore a nickname that fans and writers never let him forget. He had a big nose that scraped against the metal bar of the small catchers’ masks of the time.
“They first began kidding me about the nose and calling me ‘Schnozz’ back in the Coast League,” he said. “But the funny thing was, I didn’t get too much razzing from the bench jockeys. Mostly, it came from the fans.”
He loaned money to players around the league and didn’t press them to pay him back. When teammates played tricks on him, he would threaten to take them on, but never followed through.
The ‘Snooze’
Throughout baseball’s history there have been incidents from Fred Merkle’s base-running lapse in 1908 to Bill Buckner’s fielding error in the 1986 World Series that are written about and remembered by fans while their long productive careers are forgotten.
Ernie Lombardi had the same fate in the 1939 World Series, though his so-called lapse had no bearing on the outcome of the Series.
The Yankees had swept the Cubs in the 1938 Series and led the Reds 3-0 in ’39. Game Four in Cincinnati was tied 4-4 in the top of the 10th inning. Bucky Walters was pitching.
The Yankees had Frank Crosetti on third and Charlie Keller on first with one out. Joe DiMaggio singled to right. Crosetti scored the go-ahead run and when the right fielder bobbled the ball, Keller headed for home.
The throw reached Lombardi as the 185-pound Keller crashed into him, sending Lombardi sprawling and the ball rolling away. DiMaggio had never stopped running and slid across the plate before the dazed Lombardi could revive and retrieve the ball. The score was now 7-4.
The Reds failed to score in the bottom of the 10th. The Series was over.
Headlines and photos described “Lombardi’s Snooze.” But was it?
Players’ memories of the action differed. Charlie Keller denied that he had crashed into the catcher. But Joe DiMaggio, who was right behind Keller, said, “Ernie was wronged.
He was knocked out in a collision with Keller, and I saw immediately that something was haywire. I kept running and never stopped. Keller gave Ernie more than just a bump, as they described it. He put Ernie out of commission.”
Reds pitcher Johnny-Vander Meer had a different explanation. “The throw from the outfield came in a short hop and hit Lom in the cup. You just don’t get up too quick.
Somebody put out the word that ‘Lombardi went to sleep, took a snooze.’ He was paralyzed. He couldn’t move. Anybody but Lombardi, they would have had to carry him off the field.”
Bucky Walters, the pitcher at the time, called it a “silly rap” against Lombardi. “You can blame part of the thing on me. I was pitching, and I should have been behind home plate, backing up Lombardi. But the run didn’t mean anything, anyway.
The End
When his playing days ended in 1947, Ernie Lombardi returned to San Francisco and was out of baseball until the Giants moved there in 1958. He became custodian of the press box at Candlestick Park, where he enjoyed talking about his playing days with visiting writers.
He believed he deserved a plaque in the Hall of Fame, but it didn’t happen until after he died in 1977.
