View From the Cheap Seats

On this date in 1938, the St. Louis Cardinals did what would have been unthinkable three years earlier. They dealt a declining Dizzy Dean to the arch rivals, the Chicago Cubs, in exchange for for pitchers Curt Davis and Clyde Shoun — and more importantly, $200,000 in cash.

Ol’ Dix was a shell of his former self after an arm injury. But he was still a colorful character who could sell tickets in Chicago.

A tip of the cap to James Earl Jones who performed the climactic scene of the greatest baseball move ever. I hear he was also in some space movie. But whatever. Mr. Jones passed away today at 93, a truly great actor with maybe the most memorable voice in movie history.

Anyway, his “people will come” scene always made me wonder who the St. Louis Cardinals player among the ghostly baseballers who emerged form the corn in Field of Dreams.

I’m going with Austin McHenry who sort of like Moonlight Graham had his career wrested away from him. McHenry was an instant star after arriving in St. Louis in 1918. But his career was over four years latter when dizzy spells that interrupted his .350 hitting turned out to be a brain tumor that claimed his life at 27.

McHenry would have been a contemporary of the Black Sox players banned from baseball after the 1919 World Series. So that makes sense. I just can’t think of any other St. Louis player with such a heartbreaking story whose major league destiny was left unfulfilled.