Friday Stuff
Lesser-Known Switch-Hitters Edition
Monday
If you’re like me, you’ve probably never heard of Jim Russell.
He was an outfielder who mostly played in the 1940s and had his best seasons when most starting big leaguers were off fighting World War II. Also, he played for the Pirates in those years, and while they weren’t yet as awful as they would be about a decade later, it’s also true that no one was paying much attention to them. They had Bob Elliott and Vince DiMaggio and Johnny Barrett, along with some decent pitching, but they weren’t winning pennants or anything.
Russell played a pretty anonymous role in baseball, in other words. He was never an All-Star, never led the league in anything (other than being caught stealing; he did that three times), never played in the postseason, and once the better players came back from the war, his performance slowly declined until he was out of the big leagues for good in 1951 at the age of only 32. And yet, Jim Russell set a big league record that was broken by none other than Mickey Mantle.
Mantle, of course, is the best switch-hitter ever and probably the best-known as well, and Monday marked the date in 1956 when he homered from both sides of the plate in one game for the third time in his career. It was something he’d go on to do seven more times for a career total of ten, a record that stood for a long time and still remains tied for the sixth-most in history.
Mantle’s first homer of the day came batting right-handed against lefty Billy Pierce, a two-run shot in the fifth inning that increased the Yankees’ lead over the White Sox to 5-1. Four innings later, after Chicago had come back to take a 7-6 lead, Mantle homered from the left side against righty reliever Dixie Howell, a solo shot that tied the game. New York ended up scoring a run in the tenth inning to win, 8-7.
When Mantle hit that homer off Howell, he broke the current all-time record of two games with homers from each side of the plate, and that record was unexpectedly held by the aforementioned Jim Russell.
Russell wasn’t much of a power hitter. In over 4,000 career plate appearances he homered only 67 times, and never hit more than 12 in any season, and yet he was the only switch-hitter before Mantle to homer from each side in the same game more than once. And, oddly, in each case he was past his prime years playing for the Pirates.
In 1948 Russell was playing for the Boston Braves, having been traded by the Pirates during the prior offseason. He was having his last good year when he got injured in late July, barely played for a couple more weeks, and then was shut down in August and missed out on that year’s World Series as his teammates won the pennant. But before that, on June 7, Russell had a spectacular game in Wrigley Field against the Cubs, not only homering from each side of the plate for the first time in his career, but also doubling twice and driving in a total of five runs in the 9-5 Braves victory. He became only the second National League player ever to homer from each side of the plate, the first being the Cubs’ Augie Galan in 1937.
Two years later, after Russell had been traded to the Dodgers and served as a backup outfielder, he got a start at home against the Cardinals on July 26, and became the first player ever to homer from both sides of the plate a second time. The first one came from the right side, a first inning two-run shot off starter Harry Brecheen that gave Brooklyn a 2-0 lead. Then in the fifth inning, after Brecheen had been chased and righty reliever Red Munger was trying to keep Brooklyn’s lead to only 5-2, Russell led off the inning with a solo shot from the left side.
Oddly enough, those nearly proved to be the final two homers of Russell’s career. Six days later he hit a dramatic two-run homer in the ninth inning against the Pirates to tie the game, then won the game with a walk-off RBI single an inning later. That game-tying homer proved to the last he ever hit, preventing him from having the distinction of homering from each side of the plate as his final two big league homers.
But at least he had a major league record all to himself, one he held for nearly five years before the best switch-hitter ever finally broke it.
