On This Day: Ron Necciai Strikes Out 27 Batters

BRISTOL, TN, May 13th—In the Class D Appalachian League on this night in 1952, a 19 year-old righty from Monongahela, Pennsylvania, pitched one of the most impressive games in the history of professional baseball. 

Ron Necciai, a Pittsburgh prospect then on option with the Bristol (Va.) Twins, absolutely dominated the Welch Miners in a game in which he struck out twenty-seven batters in a nine-inning no-hitter. 

Twenty...seven. Let that sink in. And yet, three years later, Necciai was out of baseball at age twenty-two.

From The Cincinnati Enquirer; May 15th, 1952

It was Shaw Stadium in Bristol, Virginia, that would be the stage for this fairy-tale performance. Necciai had a special bond with the manager of the Twins. George Detore was a baseball lifer, and had been a longtime friend and mentor of Necciai's since the death of Necciai's father Attilio at age thirty-one. He was a steadying influence on the teenage fireballer, one that he sorely needed. The difficulty of adjusting to professional baseball was causing Necciai a tremendous amount of stress, most of which was being internalized, and would soon lead to a bleeding ulcer and a visit to a specialist. 

Necciai was tremendously gifted; he had a fantastic arm. The problem was, he didn't know how to use it. He was all over the place. A Pittsburgh barber named Tony Rockino discovered Necciai while he was pitching for Monongahela High in the suburbs, and passed this information on to the Pirates. The Pirates actually signed him as a first baseman, as Necciai had been moved to the position after breaking two ribs of an opposing batter with a wayward fastball, but after seeing his arm strength on display during practices they quickly moved him to the mound. It was Detore who broke the news to Necciai. 

After two frustrating weeks struggling to learn a new position, Necciai quit the game and returned to Monongahela. He was working in an auto parts plant when Charlie Muse, the scout who originally signed him, finally persuaded him to return to baseball. 

After only the briefest of moments with Salisbury and Shelby, Class D teams in the North Carolina State League and West Carolina League, respectively, Necciai returned to Salisbury and the steadying presence of Detore. Branch Rickey, who watched Necciai throw in spring training, convinced him to drop down to a sidearm delivery, and also taught him an overhand curve. Still, consistent control eluded him. Once again, Necciai was ready to head back to Pennsylvania and the auto parts plant, but Detore convinced him to remain.

The stress continued to eat him up, inside. The Pirates saw fit to push him all the way up to Class-AA (referred to as Class-B, back then) and the New Orleans Pelicans in the Southern League, an awful long way from the ranks of the Class-D ball, and the results were fairly predictable: 1-5 record, 8.45 ERA in 33 innings, but he did strike out 42, in the process.

Still, the organization was continually impressed with his potential, and he received an invitation to Spring Training for 1952. He performed reasonably well, all things considered, though he was now struggling with the bleeding ulcers, frayed nerves (chain-smoking in order to cope), and unpredictable control. He gave up two runs on four hits in three innings in an appearance vs. the St Louis Browns on March 9^th. He picked up a win vs. the San Francisco Seals on March 15^th, then struck out two and walked only one in five shutout innings on March 18^th against the Giants. In a 4-2 loss to the White Sox, Necciai gave up a run on two hits in two innings, striking out one. The Browns touched him up for four runs in the first inning of his March 26^th appearance, but he shut them out over the next four innings in the 4-2 loss. On April 5^th, the Cubs touched him up for three singles and a double, while Necciai cut loose two wild pitches, and allowed four runs in the 7-1 loss.

His lost time and continuing struggle with ulcers wore him down all through spring training (he was down to around 150 pounds, at the time), and the 6'5” righty pushed through it the best he could. He asked the organization to return him to Bristol in order to give him a little more time to get into game shape. On Opening Night in 1952, Necciai faced the Kingsport Cherokees and sent twenty of them down on strikes. In his next start, it was nineteen Ks vs. the Pulaski Phillies.

Then came the masterpiece that was his May 13^th start.

His catcher was an eighteen-year-old named Harry Dunlop (more on Mr. Dunlop, in a later post), a young man who was unknowingly beginning a lifetime career in baseball that would begin with 980 games at various levels in the minors, stints as a minor-league coach and manager, then 21 seasons as a major-league coach with the Royals, Cubs, Reds, Padres, and Marlins. Dunlop later recalled that Necciai threw an unnaturally-light fastball; that it barely felt like it hit the glove, as compared to other so-called “heavy” fastballs. He said it had a natural rise to it (perhaps owing to a tremendous spin rate), and that his curve would drop either to the left or right depending on subtle changes in fingertip pressure by Necciai.

Necciai cruised through the first six innings, and all the while the 1,183 fans present were beginning to count the strikeouts, yelling out the K count as the number became more and more unbelievable. At one point in the game, Detore had to send a glass of milk and a couple of stomach pills to the mound, as Necciai's gut was roiling like an active volcano. Detore said that he remembers Necciai throwing up in the dugout, at some point in the game.

In the ninth inning, pinch-hitter, Frank Whitehead managed to make just enough contact to lift a foul pop-up between home and first. First baseman Phil Filiatrault yelled at Dunlop, who had the ball in his sights, to drop it. Dunlop, of course, denies dropping the ball intentionally, instead blaming poor stadium lights. Nevertheless, the ball fell foul, Dunlop took the big “E” for his trouble, and Whitehead ended up striking out looking. 

Miners center-fielder Billy Hammond was strikeout #26, breaking the previous record of 25, set by Hooks Iott in 1941 and at the time the accepted nine-inning strikeout record. However, Hammond swung and missed at a curve that hit the plate and skipped past Dunlop, and reached first before Dunlop could make a play. 

Bob Kendrick, the Miners' cleanup hitter, stepped in representing the final chance that Welch had to break the mystical hold that Necciai seemed to hold over them, that night. It wasn't long before he, too, was out on strikes. That made it twenty-seven. 

Since Dunlop let a third strike get past him in the ninth inning, that meant the team would end up recording 28 outs that night. Two batters managed to put the ball in play: the aforementioned error came when shortstop Don DeVeau couldn't find the handle on a grounder in the third inning, and the other on a groundout to DeVeau in the second. Necciai was seemingly unfazed by his monumental performance, although the true meaning of it didn't set in until statisticians and writers began checking the record books. 

“I don't know what did it,” Necciai said after the game. “I just did my best and kept it up all the way.”

Interestingly, Necciai told bullpen catcher Don Becker before the game started that he didn't think he'd be able to go the distance, that night. 

In his final start for Bristol, May 21^st, Necciai was showered with gifts from fans in appreciation for his record-setting feat. That game, appropriately, was on “Ron Necciai Night”, an honor shown to him by the Twins and the Pirates organization. Necciai actually handed out his own gifts, as well: to Detore, he gave a watch with the inscription “To the man who made it possible”, and to every teammate he gave a fountain pen inscribed with the words “We did it on May 13th”. His mother even made the trip to Bristol, which Necciai hadn't expected.

Facing Kingsport that night, he struck out 24 batters and allowed a meager two hits in the shutout. 

At the end of his final game in Class-D for the 1952 season, Necciai had put up numbers which seem like typos: 109 strikeouts in 42 2/3 innings, 20 walks, two earned runs on ten hits. His season ERA was 0.42. Nobody could touch him, at least that year. 

Even so, the 27-K game had a legitimate challenger for “most impressive performance of the season” in the Appalachian League. More on that, to come.