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BrianThe article that the picture was in was great too. One story in it was that he pitched two complete 9 inning games on the same day for San Francisco. From the article:
They played two games on Sunday. They played the first at Oakland in the moring, then went back across the bay to play their second on the home diamond. Frank had pitched and won the morning game at Oakland and, while the team traveled back to San Francisco, the manager tried to talk him into starting the second game. Frank held out for a $100 bonus and it was almost game time before the check was forthcoming and he went to the mound for his second 9-innings of the day.
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Another fun story in the article:
You might , for example, be treated to a re-telling of the big day in 1913 - when Frank was on leave from the Chicago White Sox because of an illness suffered earlier that year. That was the year (and only year) that Allegan supported a semi-pro baseball team. Allegan's ace pitcher was Eddy Flood - a native of Pennsylvania - and the local promoters of the "national past-time" decided it would be great to put on an "Eddy Flood Day". Allegan's opponents on the big day would be the Grand Haven semi-pro team - coached by Ray "Dad" Hale - and the promoters thought it would be just great to get "Bullet" Miller - a home-town boy now in the major leagues - to pitch against Flood. They offered Frank $300 to pitch the game. The game drew a capacity crowd. Local sponsors decided to give Eddy Flood a banquet with some of the proceeds.
Frank Miller remembers other aspects of the game. After the banquet was paid for, the promoters could only scratch up $75 to pay him - $225 short of the original deal. He still figures he has it coming to him.
There was of course some satisfaction in the fact that the Grand Haven team defeated Allegan 14-0.
This was due, in part, to Miller's pitching ("I don't think any of them had ever seen a knuckle ball before") and to a ploy of "Dad" Hale's which Frank recalls with relish.
"Ray knew that Flood only had two pitches - a fast sudter and a slow curve which broke on the outside. Getting ready for the big game, he got a bunch of well-aged ash wagon tongues, took them to a Grand Haven furniture factory and had them turned into bats, 40 inches long."
"Now the maximum length bat in those days was supposed to be 36 inches and I told Ray that everybody would notice the difference. But he said they wouldn't and he was right. Every time a Grand Haven player went to bat it looked to me as though he was carrying a fish-pole over his shoulder, but no one even noticed. Those extra long bats made mincemeat out of Eddy Flood's outside curve. Half the hits went into the river," Miller said.
04-07-2006, 03:38 PM
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