Johnny Schmitz: More curveballs than fastballs

In his 13-year big league career 1941-1956, the first eight with the Cubs, left-hand pitcher Johnny Schmitz threw more curveballs than fastballs. His 93 wins included 16 shutouts.

Schmitz’s likeness will never hang in the Hall of Fame, but he lives on in a classic 1948 Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell of four Cubs in the dugout suffering through another loss.

Schmitz is the player standing on the right. After baseball, he was the groundskeeper at a Wausau golf course for 32 years.

We sat around the kitchen table with him at his home in Wausau, Wisconsin, on the morning of March 9, 1996. - Norman L. Macht

The Self-Taught Pitcher

I picked up the curve myself. Nobody taught me. My brother and I played strikeout against the barn wall. I was about nine. We used to take a baseball apart, take the cover off, unwind the yarn inside, take out the rubber center, rewind it and sew it back up.

It made the ball lighter, smaller. I threw every day I could. I got that good wrist action and that’s how I learned to throw a good curveball.

I threw two curves, fast and slow. The slower one was a three-quarters curve that broke bigger. I held it tight with three fingers and threw it hard as I could but it didn’t get there fast. Lot of wrist action.  

I was signed by the American Association Milwaukee club for a $200 bonus and $75 a month. They sent me to Hopkinsville, Ky. I was 14-2 but wild. Had to get out and push the bus a couple times. Got to Milwaukee in 1941, and the Cubs had a choice of our pitchers. They picked me.

The Dodger-Killer

My first big league win, I relieved against the Dodgers at Wrigley Field, threw four pitches. Cookie Lavagetto was the batter with one out. I threw two strikes, one ball, then he grounded into a double play. In the last of the ninth Bill Nicholson drove in the winning run.

I beat the Dodgers quite a bit, I think nine games before they beat me once. Shut them out several times. Dodgers outfielder Carl Furillo claimed my curve ball broke twice.

At Ebbets Field the Brooklyn fans would yell at me every inning: “We’ll get you next inning . . . Go home and beat your wife . . . “ stuff like that. They never got to me. That’s why they got me in 1951, not to pitch much for them, but so I wouldn’t be pitching against them. 

But I did them a favor in 1946. They lost to the Boston Braves in the last game, but I beat St. Louis, 8-3, and they finished tied. Pitching against the Cardinals, late in a close game I would put Stan Musial on base intentionally, even if he was the go-ahead run, and pitch to the next guy.

Musial stood back and lunged into the ball, hit you inside or outside. I pitched the big swingers up and in. Big guys can’t get the bat up there, but they kill you with lower pitches.

I’d sometimes play with the hitter’s mind, shaking off the catcher two or three times and he’s coming back each time with the same sign.

The 1948 Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell. Johnny Schmitz is the player standing to the right. Picture credits: Saturday Evening Post

In 1948 the Cubs were an old team. We couldn’t score, but I won 18 games. I lost a 13-inning, 1-0, game to the Cardinals’ Harry Brecheen.

Third baseman Stan Hack once told me, “When you talk salary, go high enough when you ask, you can always come down.” So after I won 18, I told Mr. Wrigley I wanted $30,000. They sent me a contract for $21,000 and that was what I wanted. Highest I ever made.

Leo Durocher coaching third base would try to call your pitches and holler at the batter. His code word for fastballs was “Sock it,” Even if he didn’t get the pitches, he wanted the pitcher to think he did.

I saw him once, when he was with the Giants, holler “Sock it” to Bobby Thomson. The ball went by under Thomson’s chin. He told Leo, “No more.”

In the beginning the Cardinals had picked up my pitches. When I threw a fastball, my head was straight. For a curve it was bent over a little. I found that out when we traded for one of their players.

I never wasted a pitch, never threw at a batter.  

The World Series — Almost

Most years I played on second division teams. The closest I ever got to a World Series was with the Dodgers in 1951.

In the final playoff game against the Giants, I’m sitting in the dugout when Dressen brings in Branca to pitch to Thomson and I’m saying to myself, “No. Leave Newk in. Or bring in Erskine. Branca is known for throwing home run balls.”

Two minutes later Thomson hits the home run and I said to myself, “There goes my one chance at a World Series.”