I recently checked out a book out of the local library called “The 34-Ton Bat” written by one of my favorite writers, Steve Rushin. Rushin was born in Elmhurst, Ill. and raised in Bloomington, Minnesota.
According to Rushin, he had a great-great uncle Jack Boyle who played for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, St.Louis Browns, Chicago Pirates, New York Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies between 1886 and 1898 and in 1892 was signed by the Giants for $5,500 and was the highest paid player in baseball history. Boyle was primarily a catcher and first baseman but could and did play every other position but pitcher.
Steve Rushin wanted to get into baseball and was hired by the Minnesota Twins at the age of 13 in 1979 to be a vendor at Met Stadium and did so until the early 80’s when he along with the Twins moved to the Metrodome. After graduating from Bloomington Kennedy High School in 1984 and Marquette University in 1988, Rushin joined the staff of Sports Illustrated.
But on with our story, it is not about Steve Rushin, it is about what he wrote about former Twins catcher Randy Hundley. Hundley was acquired by the Minnesota Twins on December 6, 1973 when they sent catcher George Mitterwald over to the Chicago Cubs. Hundley appeared in just 29 games for Minnesota before he twisted his knee in a June 20 game against the Chicago White Sox during an eighth inning argument with the home plate umpire over a strike call. Randy Hundley was accidentally pushed aside by Twins pitcher Ray Corbin and had to leave the game and would only appear in two more games for the Twins before being released after the 1974 season.
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Here is what Steve Rushin wrote about Randy Hundley in his book “The 34-Ton Bat”.
In 1960, Horace Stoneham paid a $110,000 signing bonus to Randy Hundley, a seventeen-year-old catcher just graduated from Bassett High School in Madison, Virginia. Hundley’s father, Cecil, was a semi-pro catcher whose throwing hand had been broken in twelve places by a baseball. As a result, Cecil Hundley taught his son to catch one-handed, with a flexible, hinged catcher’s mitt. The skeptical Giants watched him catch six games that way before abandoning the experiment and dealing him to the Cubs before the 1966 season, at which time he single-handedly — the pun is very much intended — changed forever the way catchers caught.
In 1967, Hundley’s second season in Chicago, he made only four errors and won the Gold Glove. With the stiff catcher’s mitt, the catcher had to clap his free hand over the ball, like a trumpet mute on a trumpet bell. But catching one-handed, with a hinged mitt, Hundley could keep his bare hand at his side, or behind his back, out of harm’s way, where it remained: In 1968 when he made five errors, Hundley caught in 160 games — a record to this day.
For Hundley, never taking a foul tip off his meat hand had another salutary effect. It helped him keep a promise to his mother never to swear, though it did develop, in fourteen years in the big leagues, an extensive vocabulary of anodyne expletives like shucks and blooming.
More significantly, the hinged mitt helped Hundley honor his father. He promised Cecil half of the $110,000 signing bonus he’d received from Stoneham, compensation contested by the IRS in 1967, In the landmark case Hundley v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, the U.S. Tax Court decided that the payment was indeed a genuine business expense. Cecil Hundley having performed a unique and invaluable service for his son. “A few years before Cecil retired from active participation in baseball as a player, he developed a one-handed method of catching wich was unique and unorthodox,” the ruling stated. “This technique was beneficial because injuries to the catcher’s throwing hand were avoided.”
The ruling vouchsafed one-handed catching in the American Tax code. But Hundley was not entirely done so on the baseball field — despite his simultaneous Summer of Love victories of court case and Gold Glove. In fact, that first Gold Glove would be Hundley’s last, for the following season, 1968, a more prodigiously talented catcher — also the son of a semi-pro player — would win it, and do so without pause for the next decade.
Johnny Bench was a two-handed catcher on July 31, 1966, when he broke his thumb in the very first inning of his very first game for the Buffalo Bisons. In sitting out the rest of the season, he had time to witness Hundley’s ascension in Chicago, and to contemplate catching one-handed, which he was doing rather adeptly, by 1968, when he was named the National League Rookie of the Year.
In winning the National League Most Valuable Player award in 1970, Bench — like Spalding with his black glove — had the bona fides to change the way all his colleagues caught the baseball. And it was neat he did so in Cincinnati, one hundred years after other Cincinnati catcher, Doug Allison, first caught in buckskin mittens.
The year that Hundley moved to the Cubs and Bench broke his thumb in Buffalo, a ten-year in Seattle, the son of an attorney, drew up an ironclad contract with his sister: For $10 he would get unlimited use of her baseball glove, whenever and wherever he wanted. The contract is often cited as early evidence of the budding business sense of Bill Gates, who — like Hundley — would also prove revolutionary.
By its centennial, 1970, the catcher’s mitt was so firmly fixed in American culture that a key American outpost in the Vietnam war was called just that. The “Catcher’s Mitt” — formed by prominent bends in the Song Be River north of Saigon — would become a late line of defense against the advancing Vietcong.
After his time with the Minnesota Twins, Hundley moved on to the Padres in 1975 and back to the Cubs in 1976 but his bad knees limited his play. In 1977 the Cubs named Hundley their bullpen coach and activated him for two games late in the season but at the age of 35 Hundley’s playing career was done and he retired.
Hundley managed in the Cubs minor league system from 1979 to 1981, leading the Midland Cubs to first place finish in the Western Division of the Texas League in 1979.
After leaving the playing field, Hundley originated the idea of baseball fantasy camps, and since the early 1980s, has operated them to the delight of many baseball fans and also to the former pro players who return to the uniform to help coach the teams. For years, Hundley operated camps for many major league teams but now concentrates on the Chicago Cubs. His son Todd Hundley was also a catcher, playing in the major leagues for 15 years.
What is amazing to me about Randy Hundley is that between 1966 and 1969 he caught 149, 152, 160, and 151 games. That is an incredible 94% of the games the Cubs played, 612 out of 650. No wonder his knees gave out!
The book by the way is great, if you are a baseball fan and want to learn more about the great game of baseball, find a copy and read it, you won’t be sorry.